Urashima Keitaro Super Spy
by lucesw
Summary: Chap. 4 Posted! AU. Urashima Keitaro, secret agent and super spy, is sent to the Kanagawa prefecture to aid his former partner from years ago, who is stationed at a local inn, the Hinatasou. More Complete Summary Inside.
1. Prologue

Urashima Keitaro, Super Spy

Disclaimer: Love Hina is not mine in any way, nor shall it be mine ever. Give your praises to Ken Akamatsu, and not me.

Summary: AU. Urashima Keitaro, secret agent and super spy, is sent to the Kanagawa prefecture to join his former partner from years ago, who is stationed at a local inn, the Hinata-sou. There, they must prevent a crime boss from kidnapping a candidate for world domination? Who is this boss? And why does his partner act really weird around him?

A/N: This is my first AU, and I hope it's good. Any suggestions, comments, and other things you just might want to say are appreciated. Please R&R!

"…" Denotes speech

_Italics_ Denotes thought

**Bold** Denotes sound effects

Certain Sounds:

**GOOMPH! **Means Fainting

**DOOONG!** Means Shock

:blah: Denotes time/time change

A scene/scene change is denoted by an extra line.

Prologue: The Magnificent Tongue Lashing of 888-4 of 2000

"Agent four, come in. Are you there Agent four?" a short figure spoke into a radio, huddled between two massive skyscrapers in New York City. The radio crackled, then a voice responded.

"Agent 888, I am in position. Ready to commence operation. Just give the sign." The figure turned off the radio and stood up. Pretty short, being 151 cm tall, the person was wearing a hooded cloak, wrapped around like a towel hiding most of the features. Suddenly the cloak was thrown off, revealing a woman of small stature and with straw colored hair. Her skin was a shade of brown that was exotic and beautiful that only peeked out from beneath the suit she was wearing. The suit was interesting; a jumpsuit, but with various soft dials and buttons all showing on the suit that seemed to be painted on rather than actual buttons.

The woman scanned the opposite street. There were tall buildings – malls, but big ones where she spotted another figure on the roof. She made a "peace" sign with both her hands and crossed her arms, to which the figure on the roof promptly jumped of the building. A quick confirmation that he was falling and the woman went back into the alleyway and took the manhole of the cover of a sewer line. **BOOOOOOOM! **An explosion suddenly rocked the streets, causing flying debris to be thrown every where. Water from the pipes started to leak and there were horns, sirens, and screaming. Smiling, the woman descended into the depths of the sewer. She tapped a button on her suit.

"Four, are you there?" she asked. She heard a crackle, then a long "whooshing" sound that surely was air rushing by the mike on agent four's piece.

"Yes…I'm a bit busy though," he said. "But how is it down there, triple eight?" Agent 888 put on a mask and smiled again.

"It's okay, but smells a bit like your cologne you sometimes wear," she said. She continued run along the edge of the sewer pipe. She could get wet, but it was preferable if she didn't actually dive into the raw sewage of New York City.

"Hey, you picked that one out!" Agent four responded, when suddenly the whooshing stopped. Agent 888 also stopped, glancing at the top of the pipe above her. She placed four coin-shaped objects in a diamond shape arrangement and stepped back. Taking out a small remote, she pressed a large green button. There was a hissing, and the suddenly a thick diamond-shaped cement slab fell and splashed into the sewer. A green glow could be seen in the hole that remained and agent 888 heaved herself up into the room. It was filled with pipes, large machines, and she assumed that it was an air exchange room she had entered.

"I'm in," Agent four reported. "Window cut perfectly." She heard him unclip himself from the line he was on.

"Me too. Okay, remember to keep all contact to a minimum," agent 888 said.

"I'll try not to kill anyone," Agent four told her.

"And no more contact," agent 888 reported. "They might be listening in."

"I'll try not to, but what if you want to hear my melodious voice?" Agent four asked. Agent 888 just laughed and turned it off. A quick preliminary scan had told her that nobody was here, but they could still have safeguards she didn't know about. A classic approach was to climb through the air vents, but she was agent 888. She would not sneak in, but bust the door down. She approached the door and pressed herself against the wall, pressing several buttons on her suit. It beeped softly and from her leg a small pen appeared. She detached it and held it to the doorknob where there existed a primitive key-lock. A thin metal wire protruded from the pen and she fiddled with the lock for a few seconds. **Click!** The door swung open creaking as it did. It revealed a dimly lit hallway, telling agent 888 that no one ever came down here. Still, she was cautious as she snuck down.

"Agent 888!" she heard over the mike.

"Four! What did I tell you about contacting me!" she hissed. But Agent Four kept talking.

"We've got a problem," Four said. "I—" then suddenly he was cut off.

"Four? Four?" Agent 888 asked, but there was no response._ I **told** him not to contact me, but now he did,_ she thought. The hallway took an abrupt turn to the left, where you could see stairs running up the 10+ floors of the skyscraper. On the left of the stairs, a huge storage elevator stood. Agent 888 snuck by it and looked at the stairs. The stairs ran along the wall, leaving a hole in the middle, which was perfect for agent 888 to shoot a repel rope. _Lucky for me,_ she thought, and with one deft motion she withdrew a repel gun from the inside of her suit and shot a rope that whizzed through the air and stuck to the ceiling. **Crack!** She tugged on the rope to see if it was sturdy enough. Satisfied, she pulled the trigger and the gun slowly started to wind the rope back up, pulling agent 888 with it. It whirred as the motors turned, but the repel gun was satisfactory and she made it to the 13th floor with no problem. She hopped lightly from the rope onto the stairwell and left the gun hanging mid-air.

She reviewed her plan. The 13th floor, where she now was, was crucial because even though there were several more stories above until the penthouse on top, to access the _hidden_ part of the building she had to enter from the 13th floor. _And I used to wonder why buildings jumped from the 12th to the 14th floor,_ Agent 888 thought grimly as she adjusted the dials on her suit. Although it was perfect for sneaking around, if she happened to _meet_ anyone in here…well, let's just say it would be better to be well protected. The suit hardened and was no longer made of padded nylon, but of a material like Kevlar. _Only better,_ agent 888 thought as she opened the door. The sight that met her eyes comforted her, because no one was around. If it was all going to plan, they should be distracted just enough from the explosion in the front that agent four and she could sneak in, steal the necessary files, and get out. The disturbing contact that agent four had made replayed in her mind, but she put it away with her other worries. She was a professional, after all.

The stairwell she had just left was at the end of a hallway. It was a very long hallway, and rooms which looked like labs were at the right and left. One of these labs had a hidden stairway, which would lead to the control center. Once there, she would have to deactivate all the cameras and possibly gun turrets (who knows?) before agent four grabbed the files, which were stored on the mainframe on the 20th floor. Of course he would have to download them and erase them. _Hmm…he probably has to take the elevator,_ agent 888 thought, _knowing how lazy he is._ However, they were supposed to meet here before they started. Where was he?

She continued to walk towards the lab, holding out a device that looked like a palm pilot, but on it there was a simple 2D layout of the floor she was on, and a bright blinking red dot indicated where the hidden stairway was. _Luckily our intelligence is good,_ she thought. As she reached the place where the blinking red dot indicated, she slowed down and reached once more into her suit and pulled out a pistol and a silencer. She really didn't know _what_ could be in there, and she just had to be sure. Screwing on the silencer, she slowly slid along the wall to the edge of the door. _1…2…3…_she thought. _Now!_

**BAANG!** She kicked open the door with her pistol out and ready held firmly with two hands. An empty room stared back at her. _Lucky, _agent 888 thought, and although it seemed that way she still was cautious as she went around the lab tables, benches, chairs, equipment, and machines. She reached her destination and waited for agent four. He should be here anytime.

He didn't appear. She waited five minutes, ten, then when fifteen minutes passed she decided that the contact he left meant that he had been captured. She looked at the fume hood that sat in front of her, and she reached behind it and felt for a hidden switch. **Click!** _That was easy,_ she thought, and behind her the lab table spilt in two and stairs led down. _Down?_ Agent 888 thought suspiciously. Intelligence had told her that the stairs led _up_ not down. Perhaps, though, they had out-dated information. The reconnaissance mission through here had not been as successful as the agency had liked, and perhaps in this part they had thought it was up when it truly went down. _If they bothered to come all the way they should have done it themselves,_ agent 888 thought. Sometimes the agency was too thorough for her; why send agents through this building and not have them complete the mission?

"Because you guys are the best and we don't want you to go MIA simply because you didn't know _where_ you were headed," they had told her. She continued down the stairway that was unlighted and she faced a hallway that was pitch-black. She either would have to turn on the lights or use night vision goggles. Since turning on the lights would probably alert whoever was down there to her presence, she chose the night vision goggles. Plus, why not use the technology if she had it? She strapped them on. The pitch-black darkness turned into a world of green and at the end of the hallway there was only had one door. She could only assume that this would lead to the control center of the building, at least for the top seven floors. She slid along the wall slowly, moving her legs so fluidly that there was no noise from her movements. When she reached the door, she found it unlocked. Not that it mattered anyways as she kicked open the door with her gun ready. But before she react, a giant of a man grabbed her wrist and twisted, making her cry out in pain and drop her gun. She turned to face the man, but from behind another man she didn't see swung a giant metal bar across her head and she blacked out.

She woke up tied to a chair. A man 171 cm tall sat next to her already awake but it seemed that he was tired. He had black hair and a black eye to match.

"So you two think you can just waltz in here and steal our important files?" a man that agent 888 recognized as the man who had first grabbed her wrist said.

"And that there would be no consequence?" a second man growled. He had a metal bar that he pounded in his hand occasionally. She looked around and shuddered. She realized that she was almost naked – apparently they had stripped her of her Kevlar like suit and all she was wearing was a very thin spandex-material jumpsuit. Agent four who sat next to her was also similarly undressed.

"Well," agent four replied groggily, "that was the plan." **BAM!** The second man struck his face with the bar, but not hard enough to send him to unconsciousness, only to hurt him.

"Insolence!" he screamed. The first man held back the second man.

"We are not to kill them…yet," he told him. The second man made a threatening motion with the metal bar that included some violently graphic scenes. "But what we are to do is make them tell us who sent them and what their plan is. The boss said so." Agent 888 was slightly disappointed that all she had to deal with were oversized stupid goons.

"So ah," agent four started again, "I guess this boss doesn't want to show his face."

"He doesn't need to deal with minor pests like you," the first man told him.

"Oh. And here I was under the impression that he just had a very ugly mole on his face. You know the kind of mole that has hair growing out of it?" Agent four asked. **BAM!**

"Our boss has no such thing!" the second man shouted, striking him again. "He is the very epitome and zenith of perfection!"

"I don't know about that," agent four said, smiling through his bloody face. "Our intelligence is pretty good." **BAM!** This time the first man punched him in the gut, leaving agent four breathless.

"Silence! No more trivial banter," he said. "Who sent you?" He grabbed agent four by his spandex shirt and lifted him still tied to the chair up by it. "Who?"

"Your dad," agent four said through gritted teach and swung the chair into the big man's gut. With a howl, the big man let go and agent four fell to the floor. The chair shattered and before the other man could swing his metal bar down onto agent four, agent 888 had grabbed the chair she had been tied to and slammed it down on the man's head. She had been untying herself while agent four had been trading banter with them, and now was ready to get back at them for all they did. The man with the bar yelped and swung at agent 888, who barely managed to block it with the chair she held. However, this block sent the chair into to pieces, forcing her to back away into a wall.

"I've got you now," he snickered.

"Not yet," agent 888 replied with a polite tone. She backed further into the wall and the man snickered again. He swung, and as he did agent 888 jumped, pushing off from the wall and slamming with all her might into the man. He fell. Meanwhile, agent four was in a lock with the first man, wrestling but losing to the enormous strength that the goon had.

"You'd better give up or you might actually die," he said through clenched teeth. He started to exert more force, pushing agent four down lower to the ground.

"Funny," agent four told him, "I was just going to say the same thing to you." And he flipped the first guy over, throwing him into the wall behind him. The man slumped unconscious. Agent four and agent 888 both caught their breath.

"Well," agent four breathed, "That went well." Agent 888 glared at him.

"That was _your_ fault!" she shouted. She pointed an accusatory finger at him. "What did you do to get caught?"

"Oh I tripped over a wire and set of an alarm. Heh heh!" agent four chuckled nervously. "But all's well that ends well, eh?" Agent 888 snorted.

"As if it's ended. Come on, we have to finish our mission," she said. She moved towards the door.

"Where are we anyways?" agent four asked. Agent 888 made a quiet sound with her hand, then slowly glanced through a window in the door. There was a long hallway illuminated by dull flickering ceiling lights.

"Huh," agent four murmured coming back to agent 888. "This is the hallway I entered. That means the control center is….here?"

"What are you talking about?" agent four asked. "This is a dungeon or whatever. The control center you're supposed to infiltrate is _up_."

"What? That's what I thought, but the signal led down here!" agent 888 exclaimed.

"You dummy. They obviously jammed your GPS mapping device," agent four said, and he looked around. "Rats. I have no clue where they put our suits. PHB won't like that." PHB, their boss, was always angry whenever they lost/destroyed expensive equipment. It was not a quality only James Bond had.

"Yeah, well…if we are able to finish this mission then we might get away with only a scolding," agent 888 told him. "Well…let's go." They both walked slowly through the hallway, looking around cautiously for enemies, but it seemed those two thugs were the only enemies around. They walked up slowly into the lab again, emerging from the middle table.

"Well," agent four said, "Since we're here, we might as well do it together, eh?"

"Don't be silly," agent 888 told him. "I have to watch the cameras to warn you about any dangers and to stop anyone else from entering the control center and alerting them to your presence. Up on the 20th floor they're sure to have more than two stupid goons."

"Right…" agent four agreed slowly. "Oh well."

"Don't worry," agent 888 said, smiling. "I can still hear your melodious voice over the com. Just don't treat me to it too much. I'll do most of the talking. You on secure channel alpha beta phi?"

"Yeah," agent four said, tapping his head. They both had integrated radios implanted into their ear, so only they could hear the transmission. It tapped directly into the bones in their ear, so the faintest whisper could be heard over this radio. Additionally, it made a wonderful pair of headphones that they could connect to almost anything, including their iPods, hearing surround sound while no one else heard a thing.

"Ok, so where is this control center anyways?" agent 888 asked. She went back to the fume hood and felt behind the glass shield. She flipped the switch she had first hit and the stairs in the middle of the room were sealed again. Agent four was at the door.

"I'll be at the elevator waiting for your signal when you clear the control room," he said, and snuck out and left. Agent 888 flipped the switch several times, but the same stairs opened and closed.

"Where is the switch for the control room?" agent 888 asked herself as she watched the stairs seal themselves again. "Darn it!" she cried in frustration, and hit a beaker in the fume hood over. Immediately she withdrew her hand so nothing was spilled on it, but strangely enough, the liquid inside did not spill. In fact, it seemed as the liquid was actually a solid.

**WHIRR! **Agent 888 whirled around and saw the sink in the corner sink into the ground, and a pod came back up, replacing the sink.

"Ok, our intelligence sucks. The switch is in the fume hood…couldn't they have been clearer?" agent 888 asked no one again as she walked towards the pod and entered.

Elevator

Agent four kneeled by the elevator. He whished secretly that he had his gun. Things just usually run smoother if he can put someone out with one tranquillizer dart then if he had to manually make someone black out. He wondered if agent 888 would actually find out where the control room was. He, of course, didn't know the instructions given to agent four, just as she didn't know the instructions given to him, just in case one of them actually talked. They also couldn't even tell each other what they had been told.

"But what if I need to complete the mission by myself?" he had asked the agency, and later PHB. "Let's say agent 888 is hurt?"

"You both have the objectives. Just not the specific details," PHB had answered. "Do it your own way. We don't want the enemies to catch you _both_ if one is caught." The agency always cared more about its agents being caught then the safety of the agents themselves.

"Oh well," agent four said. He couldn't help it anymore than he could fly. If he protested, he'd probably be erased. They did that often. His com buzzed.

"Ok, I cleared the control room. Apparently, those two goons were from here because there was no one in this room and the chairs are, uh, rather large," Agent 888 paused. "And rather disgusting." Agent four heard agent 888 complaining about junk food wrappers, and other disgusting pieces of trash.

"Anyways," she continued, "that elevator you're by will open in a couple seconds" (it did) "and then you have to push a certain code to get to the 20th floor. If you notice, there is no 20th floor." Agent four entered the elevator and did notice there was no 20th floor. The buttons ended at the 19th floor. The elevator dinged as the doors closed. "So…pull the stop stick out and then enter this code in…hold on…" Agent four pulled out the red stop stick and the elevator jerked.

"Couldn't they have told me this before?" agent four grumbled.

"You know them," agent 888 replied. "Policy. Here it is…ok, enter one-five-six-eight. You got that?"

"Yeah," agent four answered. "One…five…six….eight," he repeated as he entered the numbers. The elevator jerked again and began to move up. "Ok…I'm going."

"Good. Keep me posted," agent 888 said, then fell silent. The elevator hummed up one story…two stories…three…and slowly went up seven stories then stopped.

"Okay, I arrived at the 20 floor," agent four reported.

"Now slowly push in the stop stick and the doors should open," agent 888 told him. Ever so carefully and slowly, agent four pushed it in and the doors opened slowly as the stick returned to normal position. _Huh, things are actually going according to plan?_ Agent four thought. **CLICK!** As agent four stepped out of the elevator and into a room full of large shelves that were really computer servers for the whole building, a gun was leveled at his head held by a man who reminded agent four somewhat of the two men he had just taken down with agent 888. That meant he was very big, very strong, and probably very very dumb.

"Please," he growled, "don't move." He motioned with his automatic rifle and another man quite like all the others appeared. _Do they purposely hire big, dumb, and strong people as guards?_ Agent 888 thought as the other man patted down his jumpsuit that obviously contained nothing.

"He's clear," the man who patted him down said. Luckily for agent four, his com was still on, so agent 888 could hear everything that agent four said.

"So I'm caught eh?" agent four said. **BAM!** The man with the automatic slammed it into agent four's gut, knocking the wind out of him and he fell to the ground.

"Shut up," he told agent four. Agent four was in a bind. He didn't have anything on him, not even a paper clip. And he couldn't defeat a man with an automatic rifle unarmed; he may be pretty good at unarmed fighting, but with two men…plus he didn't want to hurt any of the computer servers because he wasn't sure if destroying one would affect the others, including the one he wanted to get files from.

"Agent four!" agent 888 asked, sounding worried. "Are you alright?". Agent four sighed mentally. As if he could respond without being found out or killed. Not that being killed was not an option now. That automatic rifle looked a lot more threatening now that he was on the ground panting for air.

"Why are you here?" the man without the automatic growled. Agent four didn't respond. What was there to say? **BAM!** A punch to his face tried to convince him otherwise.

"He said," the gun-toting man said, "Why are you here?" Agent four smiled.

"To see how many dumb faces I can make dumber," he replied. **CRUNCH!** Agent four's ribs were smashed into, but not broken yet.

"Those replies will only shorten your lifespan," the man without the rifle threatened. "Now, again. Why are you here?" Agent four knew that he was hard pressed to come up with something. He only hoped that agent 888 could somehow manage to slip in and take the files so at least she wouldn't be punished for failing the mission. He had to keep their attention distracted.

"Can we play 20 questions?" agent four asked. **WHAMMO!** The man without the automatic had suddenly brought out a crowbar and slammed it down on his head. _Again,_ agent four thought, _I blacked out again._ He slumped over.

Control Station

"Agent Four!" agent 888 cried out in despair as she witnessed and heard the sickening crunch of his head being bashed in by a crowbar. "Can you hear me? Agent four, come in!" However, she shouted to no avail and it seemed that agent four was unconscious.

"Worthless piece of trash," the man that had slammed the crowbar over his head muttered. Agent four had slumped over on the ground and now was in a heap.

"I don't know…" the rifle toting man said. "I got a report that this man had single handedly taken out Hisaki and Kano." _Those must be the names of those guys we took out,_ Agent 888 thought.

"Maybe he's too dangerous to keep alive then?" the man with the crowbar asked, picking up the unconscious form. "We should throw him off the roof, since we're already at the top floor." _Oh no! I have to save him!_ Agent 888 thought. _But what about the mission? Surely he would rather have the mission done than himself saved, after all, every agent swears to this principle._

"Let's throw him off the roof," the other man agreed. They started to walk to the exit of the room. Agent 888 had to act fast if she wanted to do anything, but both choices led up to the 20th floor so she decided to choose on the way there. Only seven stories up. And she would walk.

20th Floor Server Room

A door creaked open somewhere, spilling light into the temperature controlled room. It was temporarily blocked, but then shone again. Finally, the door closed silently and all the light from there was shut off, leaving the room in darkness except for the red exit sign above the door and a red lamp placed above each row of computer servers.

A noise. No, it was nothing. Just imagination. The figure slipped continued to creep further inside the room, closer to a particular data bank. When it reached the correct one, the figure then took out a device that looked like a small box, but it had a wire coming out of it. **CRACK!** With a swift jab the front panel of the computer server bank in front of her cracked and she pulled away the pieces, revealing a mess of wires that connected to somewhere deep into the server. Looking through and carefully selecting a couple, the figure cut them and connected them to the device in its hand, carefully twisting them together. **Beep! Boop! Beep!** A couple buttons were pushed, and a few minutes later the wires were disconnected. The figure then went to the end of the row, where a small display panel was placed. Activating it, the figure did several things with the interactive touchpad, smashed it, then crept away and exited the room.

"Memory wipe will commence in 5 minutes," a synthetic voice that was not quite female announced through the room, breaking the silence suddenly. "If you wish to cancel, please enter the password now." No one was in the room to oppose this memory wipe or to oblige to the wish to enter the password now. The silence obliged the computer in fact to proceed with the memory wipe countdown.

"Memory wipe will commence in 4 minutes," the same synthetic voice announced. "If you wish to cancel, please enter the password now." Again, the silence happily obliged to let the memory wipe commence in 4 minutes. In fact, the silence seemed to encourage the computer to hurry its way on, would it please?

"Memory wipe will commence in 3 minutes. If you wish to cancel, please enter the password now," the voice announced. This time, the silence did not even bother with an answer, and went about its business, and let the memory wipe countdown to continue.

"Memory wipe will commence in 2 minutes. If you wish to cancel, please enter the password now." Now the silence may have been a bit irritated, and may have begun to tell the computer to bloody well finish the blasted memory wipe, but was interrupted by a female voice shouting from the blast of light that came from the door slamming open, the one where the figure had emerged from and had just exited.

"Ahhhh! We need to stop that memory wipe Agent four!"

"I know! Stop shouting, blast it!" a male voice replied, and the owner of that voice scrambled through the open door with the first figure not far behind.

:Half an hour before:

Stairs

Agent 888 ran over the possibilities in her head once more. These possibilities only included two major courses of action: one, get the files and get out, or two, get agent four and get out. If she wanted, she supposed that she could try to mesh both together in a sort of get the files/agent four, then get the other, and then get out but she seriously doubted that once she got one she would be able to get the other. After all, their security must have seen past _something_ they had or agent four wouldn't have been caught in the first place. _Or would he have been?_ Agent 888 thought again. Aside from agent four's inherent unluckiness, perhaps they had known two agents were going to come in? How come they had managed to be caught twice when usually they were never caught? As she raced up the stairs, she thought she would have to have a very long talk with the PHB.

Numbers flew by her. 14, 15, 16, and all the way up till 20. One more flight of stairs lead to the roof where she knew (hoped) that agent four was, ready to be thrown over, and the door in front her lead to the rows of computer servers that she needed to take the files and then erase.

"Oh, agent four if you only weren't so stupid," Agent 888 whined to herself softly. The door in front of her had a tempting look to it, but then again the flight of stairs up… who could deny their allure? She didn't want to lose her partner of 5 years after all. Ever since they had both entered the academy at 10, well he had been 10 she had been 9, they had been together. Okay, that was not quite true. At that age, you all start in a class with about fifty people in it and they sat at opposite sides of the room, but hey, they were in the same class! Agent 888 looked at herself, and imagined the PHB shouting, and then imagined the PHB congratulating her. She didn't like either one, so she shook her head violently. _Resolve…_ she thought as she, gritting her teeth and closing her eyes, reached out for the door handle.

"ARGGHH!" she heard over her com, a scream of pain and suddenly without knowing her feet rushed her up the stairs and to the roof. The door burst open as she kicked it and she saw apprehensively the same two men, one with a crowbar and one with an automatic rifle slung over his back, were holding agent 888 out over the side of the building. They were trying one last attempt at getting from him the reason for him coming here and who sent him, but his torture/interrogation resistance training had been successful. He had not revealed anything yet, or at least nothing agent 888 had heard. And she assumed that she would hear everything he said, because of their com connection. Unless he had somehow turned it off between the time he shouted out in pain and the time she kicked the door open and confessed everything in that time, they were safe.

"Who's that!" the man with the gun asked, turning to look at the door way. Agent 888 stood up, realizing she had no good plan on how to save agent four.

"It's just a kid!" the man with the crowbar said. "I'll take care of her." He lumbered over to where agent 888 was standing.

"Ok…I'll move," the man with the automatic said, throwing agent four to the ground. The roof was flat but big, and a lone building stood in one corner that was clearly for watching for helicopters because the roof was a helicopter landing pad with a huge circle around a giant H in the middle of the roof. He picked him up again and moved behind the building.

"So little girl…" the man with the crowbar said smiling. He tapped the crowbar in his hand. "I think you should go back through that door. I suggest it very strongly," he said, pointing with the crowbar. Somehow his brain did not connect the fact that anyone to even get up her to the roof must not be a little girl, which was the deciding factor that let agent 888 grab the crowbar that he was holding and with a swift kick to his arm make him release it. **CRACK!** His arm made a sickening noise and bent the wrong way.

"ARGHH!" he cried, but before he could even swear at agent 888, she slammed the crowbar on his head and he slumped to the ground unconscious.

_Easy,_ she thought and a few moments later the other man, taken by surprise, was unconscious too with a similar wound and from a similar condition.

"Agent 888!" agent four cried when he saw he was free. "What did you do? You were supposed to go and get the files!"

"Hey! I saved your butt and this is the thanks I get!" agent 888 asked.

"You were _not_ supposed to save my butt!" Agent four cried as they both started towards the stairs.

"Well…too late," she replied testily and they flew through the open door and came to a screeching halt. Twenty armed men faced the door to the 20th floor, and somehow did not notice them. Agent four motioned, and they slowly backed out.

"What are they doing?" agent four asked, slowly peering around the corner. The twenty men seemed to be focused around the door, all pointing their guns at it, just…waiting.

"Waiting for someone to…come out? Otherwise then they would be pointing their guns outwards, right?" agent 888 said.

"I think so," agent four said. "Well…what should we do?" Agent 888 peered back in, and without warning the door opened and a man slipped out facing the door as he slowly closed it. **CLICK!** The sound of twenty rifles being cocked and armed behind the man must have made him turn around very slowly.

"Who are you!" one of the twenty men, who must have been the leader, shouted.

"Oh…just a nobody," the man asked. One of the other men pointed with his rifle to the bag that he was carrying.

"What's in there!" he shouted. Apparently, these security guards liked to shout a lot.

"Nothing," the man said. "Maybe some food." The leader pointed the gun directly at the man's temple.

"What…is…in…there?" he asked very slowly. "No games now." One of the men suddenly ripped the bag from his hand, and started to open it.

"We'll find out what's in here soon enough!" he shouted, and unzipped the top. **FLASH!** A bang of bright light blinded everybody in the room.

"Ahh!"

"Aieee!"

"Argh!" All agent four and agent 888 could hear was a loud banging and shouts of pain. When they could finally see, all twenty men were down and the figure was nowhere in sight.

"What the—?" agent four asked. Agent 888 quickly checked the pulses of several of the men.

"All dead," she said quietly. Agent four bent down over one of them.

"No visible signs of wounds or bruises. Must be internal," he commented. Agent 888 looked at the door to the room where they were supposed to go.

"You don't suppose that he has taken the watch off of us do you?" she asked. Agent four opened the door.

"Memory wipe will commence in 2 minutes. If you wish to cancel, please enter the password now," a female voice announced.

"What?" agent four asked, surprised.

"Ahhhh! We need to stop that memory wipe Agent four!" agent 888 shouted, running in suddenly forgetting about the twenty dead men outside

"I know! Stop shouting, blast it!" agent four cried, racing in after her. They both knew what row they had to get the files from, but when they reached that area, to their horror, saw that the panel which would effectively stop the wipe (if they could guess the right panel) was smashed to bits. And it was a touch pad.

"Memory wipe will commence in one minute. If you wish to cancel, please enter the password now," the voice announced.

"What are we going to do?" agent 888 asked in horror as agent four tried to do something, but the screen would not respond.

"Maybe we can override the wipe with something else…something to distract it…" agent four said.

"But we don't have the computer in our suits to even do anything with it!" agent 888 hissed.

"I know…"

"Memory wipe will commence in 30 seconds. If you wish to cancel, it is too late. Please leave," the voice said.

"Please leave?" agent four asked in wonder. He looked at agent 888. She shrugged.

"Maybe it doesn't want us to be here for…" but agent 888 had no answer.

"Memory wipe will commence in 15 seconds," the voice announced. "All in the area are advised to leave."

"I think…" agent four said, backing away suddenly, "I remember something about an explosion after the memory wipe."

"Oh," agent 888 said, and they sprinted out the door as fast as they could.

"Memory wipe will commence in 10…9…8…7…6…5…4…3…2…1. Thank you, and have a nice day," the voice announced, and promptly blew itself up.

The Agency

:Some undetermined time later:

Sometimes a failure is avoidable, and sometimes it is not. Sometimes the consequences of both choices are bad, and usually one choice is worse. This time, apparently, agent 888 had chosen not only the worse choice of the two, but the _worst_ choice.

"YOU DARE COME BACK HERE WITHOUT THOSE FILES!" the PHB screamed loudly. Agent 888 and agent four both meekly hung the heads in shame. "AND YOU LOST THOSE SPECIAL TAILORED HIGH POWERED STEATH SUITS!" he screamed again. Agent 888 and agent four both had been yelled at, but always had they both somehow managed to complete the mission in a little bit of a satisfactory way. "AND YOU SAY THAT SOMEONE _ELSE_ TOOK THE FILES!" However, this had been the worst tongue lashing that had ever been heard in the history of the Agency. Yes, there had been the great Troy-Rhodes tongue lashing of 1920, and the wondrous Homes-Watanabe lashing of 1985, but those two paled in comparison with this new lashing, forever to be labeled as the magnificent 888-four tongue lashing of 2000.

"We said that there was nothing we could do sir—" agent four started but the PHB pointed one finger accusingly at agent 888.

"You STOP right there. I know what you are doing, and I've read the mission report! She COULD have gotten the files before that…that...interloper took them and initiated the self-destruct. But nooooooo!" This time he shook his huge finger at agent four, who happened to notice the huge amount of hair on the PHB's knuckles. "SOMEONE HAD TO GET CAPTURED!" he shouted and slammed his other hand on his desk that had already been slammed twice this one shouting session. Usually, once was bad enough, twice meant that you might be demoted, and three times…well, they just don't talk about what happened to Lee.

"YOU GUYS ARE OUT!" he screamed. Agent four and agent 888's head were hung low in shame, but that didn't mean they didn't know when to protest.

"What!" agent 888 asked.

"Are you joking!" agent four cried. They both had nowhere else to go, nowhere else to be, and no one else to be with. Sure they could defeat plenty of people in unarmed hand-to-hand combat, but that didn't mean they could get a job and…have a life!

"NO! NO! AND NO!" The PHB slammed his palm one last time during this tongue lashing. "YOU GUYS ARE OUT! I WANT YOUR RESIGNATIONS ON MY DESK TOMORROW MORNING!" The PHB was breathing heavily now, and even though he paused to wipe the sweat off his brow, it didn't mean that his threat was any less frightening. What the PHB said, he usually got.

"What…" agent 888 started, but agent four shushed her.

"Listen…sir…it's all my fault," agent four started. "If you want to fire somebody, then you should really fire me. I mean, if I didn't know agent 888 that well then she wouldn't have bothered to save me and the mission would have been completed as planned." The PHB stopped mopping his brow for a moment and straightened his tie he was wearing, along with a collared shirt and nice pants.

"That's right," a voice said from the screen above the PHB's desk. This man was the head of the entire agency and so had to have his identity saved, but always listened in on important conversations like this. "The only problem is their bonds of friendship to each other. I think we should keep this strictly professional. Perhaps a few years apart might solve it…"

"A few _years_?" agent 888 asked incredulously.

"Yes," the voice answered. "A few years. In fact, I have the perfect job for you, agent 888." Agent 888's mood had sunk even lower, if possible. Didn't she save agent four so they could _continue_ to be partners? She almost wanted them both to be fired together.

"What is it?" agent 888 asked reluctantly.

"It involves a secret monitoring of a vitally important person. The details are in this file." And a hole appeared in the PHB's desk where a file popped out. Agent 888 took it and started to read.

"Please fulfill this to the best of your ability. You are dismissed," the voice said, and agent 888 walked out of the room, and took one last look at agent four who was standing very still not saying of doing anything through the window of the PHB's office. Then she went to her office.

"Agent four," the voice said, and agent four stood up straighter involuntarily.

"Yes sir?" he asked.

"You will remain on active duty. Please take this mission and fulfill it to the best of your ability," the voice said. "I'm counting on you." And the link died, indicating that whoever controlled the place (he was referred to as the Top Boss) had left.

"Agent four," the PHB said. "You are dismissed." He turned back to the mounds of papers on his desk and agent four started to leave.

"Sir, if I may ask?" agent four asked at the door. The PHB looked up.

"Yes?"

"What is the duty of agent 888?" The PHB sighed.

"You know as well as I do that one agent cannot know the doings of another," the PHB said. Agent four nodded, and turned around to leave.

"Agent four!" the PHB said right before he left. Agent four popped his head back into the PHB's office.

"If you, you know, do well for these couple years and survive…" the PHB started.

"You don't need to say anything sir," agent four said, and he left.

:Several Years later, 2004. Saturday:

**BANG!** A sound rocked through an old wooden building, which looked like a Japanese inn. **BANG!** The sound came out again, shaking the whole inn. Smoke poured out from a window, a specific room, 301.

"SUUU!" someone screamed. The room from where the smoke poured out of opened, and a straw haired 151 cm tall middle school girl, who looked foreign to the country she was in and just slightly exotic, walked out.

"What do you want?" she asked. Apparently she was Su. A tall Japanese girl sporting the traditional Japanese kendo uniform, a long white shirt called a gi and long pants that were so baggy they resembled a skirt (called a hakama), also with long black hair came out.

"I want you to stop creating these crazy inventions that will destroy the Hinata-sou!" the girl cried.

"Aw…come on Motoko!" Su exclaimed to the long haired girl, who was apparently Motoko. "I was making a robot swords fighting robot so you could practice better!" Su clung on to Motoko.

"I don't need that!" Motoko shouted, "And all the smoke gets into my room and stains my clothes so they smell like smoke!"

"You don't hear Shinobu complaining, and she's right below me," Su said.

"The smoke doesn't go through the floor!" Motoko yelled. She decided to walk away from this nonsense and walked down the stairs to the living room. Su shrugged, and went back inside her room.

"Having trouble?" a brown haired girl asked. She was average height, around 165 cm tall, but her hair was long, down to her waist. It was also untied.

"Su is just crazy," Motoko said. "Nothing to worry about Naru." Motoko entered the kitchen.

"Ah, Motoko-sempai! Dinner will be ready in a moment," a girl shorter than Su said. She had black hair cut short, not reaching her shoulders.

"No problem Shinobu. I'm just grabbing some water," she said and did so, grabbing a cup and filling it with water.

"Ah…" she said, sighing in relief. She had just come inside from the roof where she practiced kendo with a devotion that matched many monks. Everyday at five in the morning she woke up and practiced for two hours before getting herself ready for school. She was only in her first year of high school.

"Dinner's ready!" Shinobu cried, and all of the other tenants of the dorm mingled in, including Su, Naru, and Kitsune (whose real name was Mitsune, but because of her foxy ways she was nicknamed Kitsune, combining Kit, fox, and the last part of her name, sune). In actuality, Kitsune stumbled in, in a half-drunken stupor that always happened on Saturday evenings. Having left high school, Kitsune had decided not to attempt college, having what she liked to call a bad case of "naturally induced and chronically occurring sluggishness" (i.e. she was lazy), and instead worked freelance, sponging often off her best friend, Narusegawa Naru, who was still in high school, albeit a third-year.

"ITADAKIMASU!" Su shouted and jumped into her seat ready to gobble down everything in front of her.

"Su! Wait a moment first," Naru ordered. The oldest and most responsible of the bunch Naru was the unnamed leader of this little group. Looking sad, Su waited while everybody sat down. Kitsune took the longest, but finally she too sat down in her chair.

"Ok Su, now you can—" Naru started, but before she could even finish her sentence Su had started to eat. "Never mind. Itadakimasu!" she cried, and everybody started to eat.

**KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK!** A rapping sound was made against the door and an older woman, although still only 27 and in her prime, walked in. Her hair was shoulder length and black, indicating that she was also Japanese. The only real foreigner was Su here.

"Haruka-san!" Naru greeted. "What's up?" Haruka was the owner of the Hinata Tea Shop, a few steps down the hill from the hill that the Hinata-sou was built on, and the current manager of the Hinata-sou.

"Everyone," she said. "I would like you to meet my nephew, Urashima Keitaro!" she said, and pushed a young man about 19 years old in to the room.

"Err…hi," he greeted.

"Hello," Kitsune responded, drunk. "Who's this sexy looking thing?" Needless to say, Urashima Keitaro blushed.

"And from today onwards he will be your new manager!" Haruka said.

"WHAAAAATTT!" was the general reply. Perhaps a little explaining is in order. They are not in an inn, per say. It used to be an inn, run by an old woman who they (the tenants) affectionately called Grandma Hina (although she was not a grandma to any of them). But seeking a more fulfilling retirement and life than running an inn, Grandma Hina had left the inn to travel the world, ordering her daughter (Urashima Haruka) to take care of it. She also turned it to a dorm, a female dorm specifically, so that it would be easier to manage and slowly these five people, Aoyama Motoko, Kaolla Su, Narusegawa Naru, Konno Mitsune, and Maehara Shinobu came to live in it. So the idea of making a man the manager of a women's dorm was not very appealing.

"He's Grandma Hina's grandson, and my nephew, and she just faxed me a letter stating that Urashima Keitaro is to be the new manager of the Hinata-sou," Haruka said, waving a piece of paper around.

"Give me that!" Naru grabbed the paper. It was indeed a paper that said Grandma Hina had willed his son to be the manager of the Hinata-sou, with her name signed hastily at the bottom.

"No…way!" Motoko complained.

"Err…" Keitaro stuttered.

"Grandma Hina ordered it. I'll let you guys deal with it," Haruka said, and she left. She breathed in the cool air.

"Ahh…that feels good," she sighs, then glances at her watch. "I give them five minutes."

:Five Minutes Later:

"AIEEEEEEE!" **BAAAAAAAAAM!** The body of a certain manager who had just been introduced to Naru, a part of her anatomy that he probably shouldn't have touched even if he had just tripped, came flying out of the Hinata-sou and landed squarely at Haruka's feet; Haruka had been waiting for him to land.

"Oww…" he groaned. "What's her problem?"

"Welcome to the Hinata-sou Keitaro!" Haruka said. "Want to come inside for a talk?"

A/N: Ok, that was a good start I think. More to come if I feel like it, but I must warn you…it might take a while to think about the exact way this story will go. Also, I'm busy with school since second semester promises to be harder than my first semester. But as my first AU, how was it? Honest reviews, and I really don't mind criticism, but just saying "your story sucks" doesn't really help me. So honest, even brutally honest reviews help! Please R&R!


	2. Enter Urashima Keitaro!

Urashima Keitaro, Super Spy

Disclaimer: Love Hina, all related characters and likeness are not mine. In fact, if they were the whole story would have been different and Keitaro wouldn't have ended up with Naru. Not that I hate her or anything.

A/N: So the first chapter went over relatively well, according to me at least, which means more than one person reviewed it! And since it's an AU that bodes well. Well see how it progress from here though. Please R&R!

"…" Denotes speech

_Italics_ Denotes thought

**Bold** Denotes sound effects

Certain Sounds:

**GOOMPH! **Means Fainting/Face-Faulting

**DOOONG!** Means Shock

:blah: Denotes time/time change

----------------------------------- Denotes a scene/scene change

Chapter 1: Enter Urashima Keitaro!

:Fall 2004, a Saturday evening:

---------------------------Hinata Tea House----------------------

Keitaro sat down at one of the many empty tables in the Tea House, opposite from Haruka.

"Are those girls all crazy!" he asked. Haruka took a long drag on her cigarette, but didn't answer. "I just tripped!"

"And?" Haruka asked. Keitaro hung his head in hesitation.

"Well…fell…on top of one of the girls…" he continued slowly. Haruka motioned for him to continue. "And…uh…touched one of their…uh…chest," he finished lamely.

"Ah," Haruka said, knowing this would happen. Out of every single year that she had known Keitaro, she knew that he was probably the clumsiest person ever to live. And although she did not have any idea on why Grandma Hina had ordered him to be the manager of the Hinata-sou when Haruka had been doing just fine, she trusted Grandma Hina knew what she was doing. "They do that sometimes."

"Well how come they all had to smash my face in?" Keitaro asked. Haruka shrugged indifferently.

"It's them, you know," Haruka said. Keitaro snorted.

"What a horrible response," he said. "Certainly all girls aren't this crazy!" There was no reply as Haruka continued to smoke, a cloud wafting up towards the ceiling. Keitaro looked at his aunt for a few more seconds before giving up. "Well I'd better head up there, to my death, or worse." He stood up to go.

"Just don't be so clumsy," Haruka told him. Keitaro turned to look at her.

"It's not my fault!" he cried. "Seriously. These things just come to me; I must be the unluckiest guy on earth! First that, now this….what a bummer." He left mumbling. Haruka watched the door slam behind him.

"Perhaps I should make a phone call," she said, and did exactly that.

------------------------Hinata-Sou Living Room------------------------

"I…absolutely…REFUSE TO LET HIM BE THE MANAGER!" Naru shouted. The other 4 girls of the Hinata-Sou were sitting in the living room, most of them nodding their heads.

"I agree," Motoko said calmly. "We simply cannot allow a male to run a women's dorm."

"ESPECIALLY NOT ONE SO PERVERTED!" Naru shouted again. Yes, it had been her Keitaro had tripped upon, and still holding her arms across her chest in fury, she paced across the room with steam coming out of her ears.

"Well," Kitsune started to say, although she was still half-drunk, "I think he may not be so bad." Everyone sweat-dropped except Su.

"You're just excited whenever anything new comes along," Motoko said, a sweat-drop still on her forehead.

"Well," Kitsune commented further, "It does get pretty boring around here." A glare from Naru, however, served to silence her.

"Then…" she started almost maliciously, "Maybe if you HELPED around here it wouldn't be so _boring._" An uncomfortable silence ensued. Naru noticed this, and trying to recover the mood (since she wanted all of them to be on her side), changed the subject back to the unacceptable perverted manager.

"He simply can't be allowed to manage us!" Naru exclaimed once again. "He probably doesn't even know what he is doing. I mean, just because he's the grandson of Grandma Hina…"

"Ah, but we shouldn't discredit him so quickly…" Shinobu started.

"It wasn't a quick judgment!" Naru exploded, turning on poor Shinobu. "That guy is a pervert! What's the first thing he did? Make a grab for my chest!" While no one could deny the raw facts, it was quite obvious it had all been an accident. Again, a silence ensued.

"He sounds fun," Su said. Before Naru could deny this, however, Keitaro himself came back into the Hinata-Sou. The noise of the door shutting made the five girls turn towards him, and even though it was clear he had just about to say something, he made no noise, simply opening his mouth several times.

"You are not allowed here. Go back home," Naru told him flat out. "We all agree we cannot have a man manage a girl's dorm."

"But…ah," Keitaro said, his mouth still open wide like a hippopotamus.

"Please," Motoko said, standing up. "I would not like to have to force you with my sword." Her thumb unsheathed her sword by a centimeter, but it was clearly a physical threat.

"Well, I wouldn't want to hurt you…I mean, get into a fight with you…I mean, get hurt with you….I mean get hurt by you!" Keitaro said, hastily correcting his mistakes and backing up at the same time. Motoko, however, was intrigued. Did this wimpy male think that he could best _her_ in a match?

"You think you could…_beat_ me?" Motoko asked.

"No!" Keitaro flustered. "I definitely can't beat you!" However, all cries of protest were promptly ignored when Motoko whipped out her sword. He scrambled back further, but Motoko still advanced.

"For even _thinking_ you can beat me, you must pay," Motoko declared.

"Ah…Motoko!" Shinobu cried, "You can't attack him!" But something more powerful now had gripped her and she continued to advance.

"Yeah! Go Manager-san!" Kitsune cried. "Go Keitaro!"

"Ah…be safe!" Shinobu cried as Motoko started to swing her sword viciously.

"Wait! I said no such thing!" Keitaro cried as he held up a pillow in defense. Not very bright thinking, as the pillow only served to be ripped to shreds from her sword swing.

"You were thinking it!" Motoko yelled as she chased him around the room. And although the room was now systematically being destroyed because of this, Keitaro remained unscathed.

"Motoko! You can't fight him if he even doesn't have a weapon!" Naru shouted.

"DIE!" Motoko yelled, ignoring her. "Evil Cutting Sword!" A wave of pure ki flashed out and only by jumping did Keitaro manage to dodge it.

"Go Motoko!" Su cried, cheering on the battle. The result, however, had perforated the door, leaving it wide open and Keitaro sought it as his escape route.

"Oh no you don't!" Motoko yelled, and she again used her sword to unleash a wave of ki that would slam into Keitaro just as he exited if he had not stopped short just in time for it to fly by him.

"I don't want to die!" Keitaro cried, and plunged through the door safely now. In reality, Motoko had not been slashing randomly and using a powerful technique wantonly either. It had been a skill test; Motoko had used it before at her high school kendo club (of which she was captain) to test the level of new kendo aspirants, although none had ever been able to reach the point where she would have to unleash her first ki move. However impressed she might have been had Keitaro been an aspiring future kendo master, this level of skill only served to increase the amount of irritation that Motoko was feeling from not being able to satisfactorily pummel him.

"COME BACK AND FIGHT!" Motoko roared, chasing after him. The four girls followed slowly all but Su sweat dropping.

"He can't fight if he has no weapon…" Naru said, her head bowed. She sort of felt sorry for him because he was about to experience the taste of Motoko's blade, but then again, he was a flaming pervert, right?

"Au! I hope he is safe!" Shinobu cried. Her good-natured heart didn't want anyone to get hurt.

"Ah, I bet that he'll be perfectly safe," Su said, smiling. The two were still playing cat and mouse. "Look what I found, Shinobu," Su said, and she led Shinobu away to leave Kitsune and Naru watching from the door.

"You guys! Stop it!" Naru shouted. Kitsune, finally sober, had to agree.

"No matter what you think, you really can't beat her!" she shouted. Keitaro frantically answered them with a yelp as a stone split in two from a blast of ki Keitaro had just dodged.

"Fu fu fu…" Motoko said. "You'll not escape until I get you!" Motoko this time took a deep breath, seeming to summon all her energy. "EVIL CUTTING TECHNIQUE: MULTIPLE BLASTS!" And with five rapid strokes of her sword five enormous waves of ki started to fly towards Keitaro, looming over him like a tsunami of energy.

"Keitaro, catch!" Keitaro, helpless in front of the huge wave of ki flying towards him with ever increasing speed, turned to see another sword thrown at him hastily. Panicking in front of the huge wave of energy, he acted on reflex and ripped the sword out of the sheath mid-air and swung at the wave of energy.

"Useless," Motoko murmured to herself, breathing heavily from the exertion, but to her complete astonishment the massive amount of ki flung at Keitaro suddenly dissipated. She stood there, panting, and her anger flared even more. Keitaro, who for a second had been in an after-swing pose, looked up and quickly dropped the sword.

"Haha…don't know how I did that," he said. However, it was painfully obvious to everyone else that he was lying through his teeth.

"What are you talking about!" Naru shouted. "You don't just get rid of something so huge by accident!" Keitaro shrugged his shoulders.

"I…really don't know!" he proclaimed. Shinobu, however, was glad and released a breath she hadn't been aware she had been holding.

"Well…I'm glad everyone is safe!" she said, putting her two cents in.

"Safe? If he has that amount of power and is a pervert, how can he be legally allowed to manage—" but before Naru could even finish her sentence, a cry not recognizable as Motoko's but coming from her throat anyways, was bellowed above all as if Motoko was speaking through a bullhorn.

"ULTIMATE TECHNIQUE! THUNDER SWORD!" Everyone looked up to see Motoko descending from the sky as a kamikaze pilot, her sword pointed downwards with electricity sparking off her sword like it was a generator, and a bolt of lightning flowing after it. Everyone was too speechless to say anything, and frozen to the spot except Keitaro who picked up the sword.

"Urashima ultimate counter!" Keitaro bellowed. "Invisible Dome!" And with a impossibly fast motion, Keitaro spun the sword around above his head and slowly, had anyone been looking instead of crouching on the ground in fear, a hazy circle of white appeared a foot above the spinning blade about one meter in diameter. He leapt into the air and they clashed, Motoko pressing downwards against the shield, her eyes ablaze. Energy blazed outward from where Motoko meet the circle and they were stuck in midair.

"You're…pretty good," she said. Keitaro gave her an easy relaxed smile.

"So are you," he said. Then, with a heave of his arms, pushed upwards and the collective energy exploded, throwing Motoko upwards and Keitaro downwards. The whole area shook with explosive energy, knocking everyone except Keitaro out. There was smoke everywhere, a white misty haze that pervaded the air like fog. Looking upwards, Keitaro stuck his hands out and caught Motoko.

"I guess that wasn't a good way to start off landlord/tenant relationships," Keitaro said, scratching his head and looking around at the massive destruction. "Oh well, I'm glad the Agency had me well prepared."

:Two Hours Later, approximately 7:00pm:

---------------------Hinata-sou Living Room-----------------------

"Nooooooo!" Motoko cried sitting upright suddenly. "What…?" She looked around her, noticing that she was seated in a big plush chair in the living room with Su lying on her lap asleep. She noticed that Shinobu, Kitsune, and Naru were all on the couch, sleeping as well. "What is happening?" Motoko asked the air, but no one replied.

"Oh…man that was a good sleep!" Naru said, waking up with a yawn and stretching. "Hmm? What is that smell?" Naru asked, sniffing the air. Motoko sniffed, and indeed there was a wondrous odor coming in from the kitchen. They turned towards it and could hear the sounds of frying oil in a wok.

"Is he…?" Naru started, but stopped as the other tenants woke up as well.

"Man…that was the first good nights' sleep I've had in a long time," Kitsune said stretching.

"Huh?" Shinobu asked as she opened her eyes. "Why are we all here?" Su simply yawned and held her head up.

"And why are we all sleeping?" Motoko asked. She felt around her.

"Did he drug us!" Naru asked. "Did he…_do_ anything?" Everyone except Su immediately turned red.

"C'mon you guys," Su started to say, making everyone feel ashamed at thinking this, "Don't be so silly. Why would he do anything? He's cooking food for us!" And with a leap and a bounce she entered the kitchen.

"Even _he_ couldn't be that bad…" Naru admitted. "He doesn't have the guts to do that." This seemed to placate everyone, so they all followed Su in to the kitchen.

"Hello," Keitaro greeted. "I just decided to make you dinner. After you finally all agreed to let me be manager, you guys just fell asleep right there on the couches from exhaustion I guess. I figured I would let you sleep and make dinner as thanks for letting me be manager as well."

"Huh? We agreed…?" Naru thought, and seemed to remember after a lot of fighting finally conceding that they would let him be manager—at least for now. Or did she?

"Oh…oh yeah!" Shinobu exclaimed, but still confused why she would sleep after that.

"No…" Motoko said, feeling something was just plain _wrong_. Hadn't she…didn't something…? But she couldn't figure out what was wrong and the dinner did smell pretty good…

"C'mon you guys! Whoever says no to free food!" Kitsune said, sitting down at her usual place. The others took their places as well, coincidentally leaving a seat open at the head of the table. Keitaro, now wearing an apron and looking quite girly, served them all food.

"Yummy!" Su cried, and clasping her hands together declared it was time to eat. "Itadakimasu!" They ate and it was good! Even Naru had to compliment Keitaro's cooking skills.

"For a lame perverted beast," she began, "You're cooking's pretty good." Laughing nervously, Keitaro nodded seeing as she hadn't forgotten about "that" incident.

"Pretty good? This is fabulous! Man, I should get you to cook for me everyday!" Kitsune said, taking another mouthful. Shinobu had to agree.

"Yes…it is really good!" she said.

"Oh really. Well, I just finished what you had started so really all the credit goes to Shinobu-chan," Keitaro said, sitting down himself at the head of the table. Motoko, who had been poking the food with her chopsticks suspiciously, took a mouthful slowly.

"Hmm…" she said, her mouth full. She swallowed, and then took another bite. "I will concede. It is good." She said, looking at Keitaro, who smiled at her. Suddenly she turned red and looked down. _What is with him?_ She thought angrily.

They all finished dinner in due time, and Shinobu offered to clean up for them since Keitaro had made dinner.

"Oh…that seems like a good idea," Keitaro said, pondering over it. "Maybe if I make dinner you can clean up. Or the other way around when I don't have time? Unless you don't want me to make dinner at all; I don't want to kick you out of your role here in the Hinata-sou."

"No! You're not kicking me out of anything!" Shinobu hastened to reply to him. "That's a great idea."

"Ok, agreed—" Keitaro began to say, but suddenly he tripped on a banana peel that Su had secretly just put underneath his foot. "WAH!" he cried. **BOOM!** He landed on the ground causing the dust from the ground to fly up. Everyone immediately stood up, and when the dust cleared Keitaro was over Shinobu with his hands by her head in the classic "boy-forced-girl-down" position.

"Ah…" Keitaro said, sweat-dropping.

"You…" Naru said, gritting her teeth and clenching her fist into a ball.

"Wait…I didn't do anything!" Keitaro managed to cry before he felt a certain fist in his stomach. **BAAAM!** He rocketed skywards and out into the night. Shinobu simply covered herself in a ball and looked away, blushing red.

"Maybe you shouldn't have jumped to a conclusion," Kitsune commented, peeking through one eye at Naru.

"What jumping? He clearly was going to do something bad!" Naru shouted back. Kitsune shrugged her shoulders in indifference.

"As long as you haven't killed our manager, that's all," Kitsune told her. "I wouldn't want it to get boring around here again. They both walked out of the dining room.

"Shinobu?" Su asked, poking her. She was still in a ball, but seeing that only Motoko and Su were left, she uncurled herself and got up.

"Um…I have to wash up," she mumbled and started to do exactly that. Motoko finished cleaning up for her, and soon dragged Su off somewhere ("Ooh! Can we play? Can we play now!" Su cried).

The plates were soon cleaned, as Shinobu usually did this and was quick at it. She took off the rubber gloves and looked up – she wondered if the hole in the ceiling would become a problem. More importantly she wondered if Sempai was ever going to come back down.

"Sempai?" she asked herself. "When did he become that?" But he did. Maybe because he had shown his exquisite cooking skill. Maybe because he had shown his maturity in his dealings with the girls, although there were a few misunderstandings. Maybe because he was a lot older than her. But somehow he felt like a Sempai to her, someone who would guide her along the way to…something.

"Maybe I'll talk to him some more," she said to herself and walked away to her room.

:Ten Minutes Later:

**BAAAAM!** Keitaro landed back down in the dining room. He rubbed his head where there was a giant welt from landing on a hard wooden floor after being socked like he was about to kill someone. Well, he might be, but that wasn't the point…

It was just about that time where he should be going to bed, meaning he had to report to headquarters. He got up, and slowly dusted himself off. And, considering the situation, he thought all was going relatively smoothly.

"Haha, that girl, Aoyama Motoko was it? Man, pulling that out from nowhere…I'd better keep things silent," he chuckled to himself. He patted his pocket where he had used a new toy from the Agency that altered people's memories. Of course, he found it hard to find a situation where they would all be struck unconscious and wake up in the living room all together, but hey, no one told him there was a resident expert kendo master here! He would have to mention that to the PHB in his report. He headed towards the exit, then decided against it and turned around and exited through the window. He closed it noiselessly.

Several moments later, the closet opened and Su came out, and she opened the window and exited through it as well.

--------------------------------Keitaro's Room------------------------------

The manager's room was empty. _That's too bad_, Shinobu thought, as she closed the door. There was something she felt she had wanted to ask him (even though if you asked her what it was, she didn't know), but he hadn't returned after Naru-sempai had socked him. _Sometimes she goes too far,_ Shinobu thought, and blushed slightly at the thought of what happened. She left for her room.

Moments later the window opened and Keitaro spilled out on his floor into his room. He hoped no one else would come into his room. Every time he was just about to contact his boss he would hear an alarm in his head (through the wired headphone in his ear) that someone was coming. Unfortunately, it seemed to be either Shinobu checking in, or for some odd reason someone walked by his room.

"Darn it, maybe I should go to the men's bathroom," he muttered. "Very private and comfy." He had agreed to have a separate bathroom, after all, that made sense, but he didn't realize that it would be a barrel of hot water. Oh well, you get what you can in this business. He's had worse. He pulled out his communicator device once more and looked around to make sure no one was coming or hiding in his room. He had found Su hiding in his closet, and had to chase her out by throwing a banana into the hall way. She was _almost _like a trained pet, although clearly she was probably just playing with him.

"What the—?" as Keitaro looked around the room, he saw a huge hole in the ceiling of his room. "What is a huge big hole doing here?" He felt as if he should do something about it, but maybe it led somewhere interesting? He took a stool and stood on it to reach the hole in the ceiling.

"I wonder how thick the floor is," he asked himself as he reached his hands up until he felt something solid. Shining his watch light into the hole, he saw nothing. Taking a flashlight, he saw simply a wood plank covering a hole. Of course, as he felt it was easily moveable and that he saw light coming from a crack, he just had to move it completely and pop his head through the hole. He immediately wished he didn't.

"Ah…" he said when he arrived face to butt with Naru in only her undergarments. She turned around at the sound. "Sorry?" he asked, then Naru promptly blew up at him.

"PERVERT! PERVERT! YOU RAGING PERVERT!" she bellowed at the top of her voice, and grabbed his head and started pounding. At that point, Keitaro was very glad he had decided to undergo the torture training early so he would be immune to this type of pain. "I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU! FREAKING PERVERT!" Naru continued to yell. Keitaro doubted that even if he _had_ been able to breathe and explain what had happened that Naru would have been able to take it in as it was truly and not beat him to death anyways. _At least this way_, Keitaro mused, _we skip the painful explanation process._ He needed to practice not breathing for a while anyways. Although he would rather have done it in a setting that did not include several vile and unmentionable insults being thrown at him, a little spontaneous practice now and then never hurt anyone.

"I HATE YOU! GO AND DIE!" Naru yelled, and slamming his head with a final punch, Keitaro careened back down onto the floor of his room while the thin wooden board was replaced with a violent shove.

"Ow…" was all Keitaro could reply.

:3:00 AM:

Keitaro woke up to a beeping of his watch. Glancing at his watch, he cursed silently that he had to get up in the wee hours of the morning to make a stupid report to his boss. The only slight satisfaction that he had was that his boss had to get up at the same time too.

_Except,_ he realized,_ the PHB stays up all night anyways to work and sleeps in the day precisely for this reason._ Keitaro had tried really hard to make an hour for himself, but ended up chatting with Maehara Shinobu for a while, and then tried to apologize to Narusegawa Naru for another hour (to no avail, of course). Then he had tried to contact, but suddenly something in Kaolla Su's room blew up and he had to fix it and clean whatever had been there up. Needless to say, when he reached his room the deadline to contact at midnight had passed so he had to sleep for three hours for the three o'clock contact time.

"Report agent four," the PHB commanded through Keitaro's communicator reserved for things as this. On the outside, it looked like a normal cell phone.

"My insertion into the Hinata-Sou complex as its manger has gone…relatively well," Keitaro told him, hesitating on how to say it.

"What are the problems? Credibility? The letter from your grandmother should have been enough," the PHB said.

"It's not that," Keitaro said, even though he couldn't figure out how in the world they managed to convince his grandmother to will the place to him as the manager. He also hadn't known, until Aunt Haruka told him, that it had been converted into an All-Women's dorm. "The tenants themselves believe the letter; it's just that they oppose it even though it's perfectly legal."

"Sounds like you need to tighten down your authority as the manager of an inn," the PHB said. Keitaro sighed; that was the type of thing he was bad at. Confrontation.

"Maybe I'll just try my best to be a good manager," he replied. He saw the PHB snort.

"Listen, I'll tell you something from my years of experience," he said. "When you have unruly subordinates, you tell them what to do and give serious repercussions if they don't." _I know how that feels_, Keitaro thought. "You still care for them, but they need to be ordered around."

"Yes, sir," Keitaro answered, deciding just to ignore him. He continued his report. "In the morning I will attend the Cramming school to keep up my appearances as a Tokyo U aspirant."

"Yes," the PHB answered. "Very good. We've set you up so you are going to the same one as one of your tenants. We hope this will let you create a deeper bond so then you can obtain information more easily." Keitaro shifted nervously.

"Do you happen to know which tenant?" he asked. He saw the PHB reach into Keitaro's file on his table.

"Narusegawa Naru," he said. **GOOMPH!** Keitaro face-faulted. _Why her?_ He thought miserably.

"Have you made contact with our agent there?" the PHB asked.

"No," Keitaro answered, and the PHB raised an eyebrow.

"Oh really?" he asked. Keitaro nodded.

"What was the agent's code number?" Keitaro asked. "You never did mention it."

"On purpose, agent four. She is the one to initiate contact. Remember, I told you that we have had no contact with her for over a year in order to establish her credibility as a genuine tenant of that inn. She also has all the information on whom you should be protecting, and the dangers surrounding her." Keitaro rubbed his chin pensively.

"Then why was I sent in?" he asked. Indeed, this had been one of the major questions that remained unanswered. Sure, there was a dangerous situation here, but one agent should be plenty.

"A week ago," the PHB started, "Our agent broke the contact rule to leave a message on our machine that she needed more help as the situation was getting more dangerous."

"I know sir," Keitaro responded. He had been told this during the briefing. "But this seems like a relatively easy assignment. Why not send Lee, Choi, or Baker to do it?"

"Well," the PHB said, "Think of it as a reward for good behavior. It's been a couple of years." With that, the screen went blank.

"Wait, sir!" Keitaro hissed into the communicator, but he had killed it. _It's been a couple of years? What did that have to do with anything?_ He thought. _Probably just a stupid way to dodge my question. Oh well, if I'm assigned here I guess I can take a slight break and just do some studying of things I already know._ Keitaro put the communicator back into the pocket of his pants that was lying on the table beside the futon he was in. He glanced at his watch again. 3:30AM. The report had been short, but still…he had to get up in three and a half hours to catch the train to his stupid cram school. It was almost worthless to go back to sleep.

"Maybe I'll take a dip in the Hot Springs," he muttered to himself. Yeah, that was a good idea! The girls were all asleep now anyways, and ever since hearing about it, he had wanted to take a dip in the open air hot springs. "This," he told himself, "will be very relaxing."

-----------------------------Open Air Hot Springs------------------------------

"Ah…" he said, sighing as he sunk into the water and relaxed. The last time he had had time to do this had been very long ago indeed. _Relax…_ he told himself. It was probably better to do this than to sleep. 3 hours spent relaxing inside a Hot Spring was probably equal to ten hours of sleep. He listened intently to the noises of the night that comforted him. How he used to sleep so well! He remembered the time when he thought that the training was hard, and although it was incredibly difficult to go from seven in the morning to ten at night as a ten year old, it didn't compare at all to the amount of sleep that he had been getting as an agent.

"This is a reward for good behavior," he said as he sank lower into the water. The warmth spread over him like he was being warmed from the inside. "Ah…" he sighed again. Maybe this was all it was—easy, simple, and hopefully not too short. He tried to guess who the agent was.

_Hm…_ he thought. _It can't be my Aunt._ He could cross out Haruka as the agent immediately because he knew that she used to _be_ in the agency. In fact, she had entered because she had had a fling with some guy that was a very irresponsible person, at least according to Keitaro. She was a good person to talk to about agency stuff, because she had to keep confidence anyways and had been sent the basic mission details because she could help out. _I hope,_ he thought, crossing his fingers,_ that it _isn't_ Narusegawa Naru. Oh please oh please._ However, even though he hoped this he knew that with all her strength that came apparently from nowhere, she was a _very_ likely candidate. Along those same lines Aoyama Motoko could be the agent. _Hmm…_ he thought, _that wouldn't be so bad._ She seemed to have a very intense physical discipline as well as a good understanding of the "ki" force that resides in all. Of course he was better than her, but give her time and if she would learn from him…_which, of course, couldn't happen if she was _not_ the agent. Judging her personality, she would never agree under normal circumstances to learn under me._ Keitaro chuckled to himself.

That left Konno Mitsune, Maehara Shinobu, and Kaolla Su. Somehow, he didn't see Kitsune fitting the role of an agent. Someone who got drunk daily and only sobered up enough to scrounge money to get **more** drinks to get drunk again didn't seem to be up to the harshness of agent life. Shinobu seemed a tad…how shall he put it?...soft. Sure, she was extremely cute, but too innocent to have ever been an agent. And Kaolla Su, now that girl was just **_too_** crazy for him to consider her being an agent. _I mean, she regularly invents new machines, constantly having them blow up, and has no inhibitions! Who is she anyways!_ Keitaro thought. So it was either Narusegawa Naru or Aoyama Motoko? _Somehow_, he thought, _I don't like either of those choices._ And in the heat of the bath, the stuffiness of the steam, and just the total relaxation he was feeling, Urashima Keitaro drifted off to sleep in the Open Air Hot Springs of Hinata-Sou.

:Two and a Half Hours later, 6:00 AM:

"IYAAAAAAAAAA!" A high pitched yell reverberated throughout the Hinata-Sou, waking all inhabitants, as well as some of the neighbors as well. "IYAAAAAAA!" It might be helpful if we rewound a couple minutes.

:Five Minutes before that:

------------------------------Open Air Hot Springs--------------------------

**SLIDE!** The door to the open air hot springs opened as Motoko, ending her daily ninety minute training half an hour early, decided that today she needed extra rest to figure out a way to get the manager to leave. He may have an official welcome, but Motoko was sure as heck going to make sure he had no _real_ welcome from her, at least.

"Hmmph!" she said as she closed the door and turned around to see to her absolute horror the manager in the hot springs. She froze, but then noticed that he was asleep as she approached him. _He fell asleep in the hot springs? What a spineless dope,_ she thought. However, now she didn't know what to do. Clearly he had not transgressed anybody yet, being asleep, but she desperately wanted to use the hot springs. _I know! All I have to do is get some clothes on and then come back and wake him up!_ Motoko thought. Now armed with a plan she turned towards the door when she saw him slip under the water. _Oh crap!_ she thought. Even though he was a spineless jellyfish, he still didn't deserve to die anymore than the next person, so she quickly kneeled down and grabbed his arm. Suddenly he woke up, flailing and spitting water out of his mouth.

"Wha—?" he coughed, and then suddenly both Motoko and he realized that they were both naked and staring at each other.

"IYAAAAAAAAAAAA!" Motoko shrieked. "IYAAAAAAAAA!" Had she had a sword handy, she would have run the spineless perverted jellyfish right there.

"Noo! I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" Keitaro shouted while Motoko shouted. He ran. She pursued, grabbing her sword on the way out.

"Die die die!" Motoko cried, slashing wildly. "How DARE you! How DARE YOU!" she cried. "EVIL CUTTING SWORD: FORM ONE!" Motoko bellowed. Keitaro managed to dive behind a couch as he felt the ki wave pass by above his head.

"What's going on?" Kitsune said, sitting up from the couch that Keitaro just ducked behind. Suddenly her eyes popped open wide as she saw two naked figures chasing each other. "Woah! This is like from the flick that was on late last night!" She rubbed her eyes. "Is that…the manager and Motoko? Where's my camera!"

"Die die die!" Motoko bellowed, flinging out ki waves with each shout.

"Sorry! Please forgive me!" Keitaro cried, his hands over his head as he managed to dodge each ki blow by a fraction of a centimeter.

"NEVER!" Motoko bellowed once again, still as red as a tomato. They turned the corner into the kitchen, where Shinobu was preparing breakfast.

"Oh…my…" Shinobu gasped, when she turned around, dropping the plate in her hand and it shattered on the floor.

"Ulp!" Keitaro swallowed, and running around the table flew out the exit.

"SAY CHEESE!" Kitsune yelled, snapping a picture.

"AHHHH!" Keitaro cried, as the flash blinded him, but he had barely enough time to duck again as another dangerous life-threatening wave of ki flew over him.

"ENOUGH INSOLENCE! SUFFER YOUR PUNISHMENT!" Motoko yelled at him. She was just about to swing at Keitaro again when a squeaking sound came from the stairs. Suddenly both Keitaro and Motoko froze as they saw Narusegawa coming down the stairs. Her jaw dropped.

"What…is…this?" she asked, her pointing finger shaking.

"Na-Narusegawa! I can explain!" Keitaro started to say. Motoko just blushed even redder.

"It isn't what you think…" Motoko whispered, but suddenly Narusegawa bolted down the stairs and smashed her fist into Keitaro's face. **BAM! SOCK! POUND! WHAMMO!** Motoko soon joined in on pounding the poor, poor manager while Kitsune snapped away on her camera.

"ENOUGH!" Haruka had come in, led by a blushing Shinobu who had now turned her back on the scene. "STOP THIS AT ONCE!" **FLASH!** Kitsune took one more picture as they all spun around to face Haruka.

"And please," Haruka said, sighing and putting her face down in one hand, "Put some clothes on." Motoko blushed once again.

:6:30 AM:

-----------------------------------Hinata-Sou Kitchen-----------------------------

"What the heck is this all about!" Haruka yelled, slamming her hand down on the table now that everyone was here and properly dressed.

"I'm sorry," Motoko and Keitaro both said with their heads bowed down in shame. They had lost face. As well as other things, but we won't mention that here.

"How did this happen?" Haruka asked, this time without a slam but still firmly demanding an answer.

"Uh, well," Keitaro started. "I'm not exactly sure." He scratched the back of his head in his nervous way. "Let's see…ah, yesterday, or this morning I woke up early in order to take a dip in the hot springs when no one would be around—"

"Which is clearly un-allowed," Narusegawa muttered.

"—and I guess I fell asleep. Then the next thing I know is Aoyama-san is grabbing me and then she starts screaming and I start running," Keitaro finished. Haruka looked at him. "It's the truth!" he sputtered.

"Motoko?" she asked. Motoko fidgeted, but finally started to speak.

"Around 6:00 AM, I went to take my daily cleansing bath to clean off the sweat from my morning exercises. Not knowing that he was in there, I went in with only a towel. Then I saw him sleeping, and decided to go get changed and wake him up when he slipped under the water. I half-panicked that he might drown, and rushed to pull him up, and I guess in the process of rushing my towel must have come loose and…" Motoko paused.

"Don't you mean you took it off so he could see?" Kitsune asked.

"NO!" Motoko and Narusegawa both shouted at her.

"Ignore Kitsune. So then you went crazy?" Haruka asked.

"Well…to put is simply yes," Motoko said, but upon looking at the strange looks that she was receiving hastened to excuse her behavior. "But you should have seen the way he was staring at me, I mean, he was clearly going to do something if I hadn't stopped him."

"You stopped him all right," Haruka said. When she had finally stopped them, Keitaro had evidence of multiple bruises all over his body. And although she knew he was clumsy, these types of bruises did not come falling all over the place.

_Those bruises, however, are probably not just from the beating he just got. I didn't know he went through "that"…_ Haruka thought.

"May I speak?" Keitaro ventured to query.

"NO!" Motoko and Narusegawa said, flatly denying him any possibility of a defense.

"No no," Kitsune said, smirking. "Let us hear what he has to say." Narusegawa and Motoko turned towards Kitsune with an evil glare present in both of their eyes but Haruka spoke up in agreement.

"He should say something," Haruka commented.

"Fine!" Narusegawa said.

"Uh…thanks," Keitaro said. "Well, all I wanted to say was—"

"That Motoko looks really good naked?" Kitsune finished.

"Kitsune!" Motoko shouted. Haruka put her face in her hand again as Shinobu blushed along with Motoko.

"Kitsune, please do not interrupt," she said regretting that Kitsune had been around when this happened.

"Oh, but just look at the reaction of Motoko!" Kitsune pointed out.

"Kitsune…" Narusegawa growled with the threat of a mountain lion behind her. "I'm warning you." Kitsune opened one eye at Narusegawa, then returned to her normal demeanor.

"Ok, ok…" she said, giving up. "Go on, Manager-san."

"Well," Keitaro said again, clearing his throat to try to boost his self-confidence by buying time, "I really just wanted to apologize."

This struck Motoko and Narusegawa both by surprise. Here they were expecting Keitaro to shout and whine about how he had a crappy bath (they had made bad on purpose, hoping everything that was bad would make him want to leave), how Motoko should have been more careful, how it was all an accident, but instead he wanted to say he was sorry?

"Yeah," he said, coughing. He didn't really want to say the next part, but he did anyways. "I'm sorry I saw you…uh…un-clothed, Motoko." He bowed his head down towards her. "So…uh…I guess as a punishment I'll do you a favor. Um…you can even hit me if you want," he added, cringing. _Nice…_ Haruka thought. _Nice…now Motoko can't hit him because who would ever hit someone who just apologized so nicely? Well, Naru might but luckily Motoko has some honor going with her…_

"Uh…" Motoko responded, not sure what to do. He was apologizing? Maybe…just maybe, he wasn't _quite_ the perverted letch she thought she had been. "Uh…" she repeated. "No, that's okay. Um…I'll think about what you have to do for me later." _Phew,_ Keitaro thought. He had been building up energy to prepare for a critical attack, but now he could release it. He sighed in relief.

"Well," Haruka said, "Now that this is taken care of, let's all return to where we're going, eh?"

"Where is that?" Kitsune asked.

"Well I have cramming school in half an hour," Naru said. "Starts at eight."

"Yeah, so does our school," Motoko said.

"School! School!" Su chanted.

"Oh, does that mean I'll be stuck alone with only Manager-san to accompany me?" Kitsune asked. She flashed a smile at Keitaro that somehow scared him.

"Ah…no!" Keitaro said. "I have to go to cramming school too!" Everyone stared at him.

"You're kidding," Motoko said.

"How old are you?" Kitsune asked.

"Nineteen," Keitaro answered.

"So…you're a two year ronnin?" Narusegawa asked. Kitsune looked at Narusegawa, who looked back then at Motoko.

"Just how dumb are you?" Narusegawa asked. Keitaro mentally sighed, then replied as he thought he should.

"Hey! Those tests are easy!" he said.

"Yeah but twice?" Narusegawa asked. "I guess whatever floats your boat."

"If your boat is heading towards idiot-ville," Kitsune commented. Motoko laughed.

"It's true!" Keitaro asserted. Kitsune looked at him.

"C'mon…wouldn't a normal person just have given up by now and gotten a real job instead of sponging off his parents?" Kitsune asked.

"Like you're one to talk," Haruka said. "You sponge off of Naru."

"Well, whatever," Naru said. "I have to go." She looked at Keitaro, paused, then shook her head. She walked off.

"Why didn't you tell her?" Haruka asked.

"Tell her what?" Keitaro asked, nervously. Motoko, who had just been about to leave, perked up her ears.

"That you both are going to the same cramming school," Haruka said.

"SHHHH!" Keitaro hissed, his finger over his mouth.

"Oh? You don't want her to know?" Kitsune asked.

"Um…not particularly," Keitaro said. He sighed. "I guess, though it's inevitable that she finds out." His head drooped and his demeanor sank.

"Na-Naru-sempai isn't that bad!" Shinobu interjected. "Sempai, I mean, Urashima-san—"

"Sempai?" Kitsune asked.

"You shouldn't be so scared of her. She's actually a really sweet and caring girl!" Shinobu finished, trying to ignore the redness of her face and Kitsune's comment. It wasn't working so well.

"Sempai?" Kitsune repeated. "Ah, so we have—"

"Kitsune," Haruka warned. Kitsune looked at Haruka, saw her warning tone, glanced at Keitaro who was rubbing his hands nervously, and then went quiet. _I guess I spread enough chaos today,_ Kitsune thought.

"Well, I'm tired and I'm going back to bed. Night!" Kitsune said, yawning and waving good bye.

"It's seven o'clock in the morning!" Keitaro exclaimed.

"Perfect time for a nap," Kitsune answered, already outside the kitchen.

"Seven? Au! I have to get ready for school!" Shinobu shouted. She rushed out the door and so did Motoko.

"Sorry, have to go. C'mon, Su," Motoko said, and they both exited as well, leaving Haruka and Keitaro in the kitchen.

"Man, I didn't even get to eat breakfast because of that," Keitaro commented glumly. Haruka took out a cigarette. Putting in between her teeth, she lit it.

"Maybe," she said, exhaling smoke, "You shouldn't be so retarded."

"Hey!" Keitaro said. "You, of all people, should know how hard it is to get things done, like getting into college!" Haruka shrugged.

"I was hoping you'd be better than he was. Unfortunately, it looks like you're on the same track, retard and all," Haruka told him. Haruka had been talking about him in general (she knew he really didn't need to get into a university) but he had responded with a slash at her fling. So she had to respond likewise.

"Whatever," Keitaro said. "It doesn't really matter in the end." He walked towards the living room which led to the stairs to his room. "You should stop smoking. It's bad for your health. You'll also produce unhealthy babies." Haruka, for once, turned red.

"Wha-what do you know about making healthy babies!" she shouted at him but he just laughed and left. Haruka was left hanging.

"That kid," she told herself, "Is one weird potato." Usually people were not able to penetrate her cool demeanor, but somehow he had done it. She put the cigarette to her lips, but paused. Looking at it, she put it out and threw it away.

"Seriously," she muttered, walking back towards her tea shop, "what does he know about that?"

A/N: Woo hoo! Chapter 2 done! And it took so long that I didn't know what to do with it! Actually, though, it's chapter one in reality. I know you guys probably want to find out who agent 888 actually is, and I want to reveal it too, so keep waiting. I never abandon any story; it just takes me a while to type these. I will finish my other two stories too! I have vowed to never abandon. Actually, my other stories are almost done, so no worries on that part! Please R&R! Any criticism is welcome, even if it is not all good! But it should be constructive, simply saying "I hate your story" can't help me get better, eh? One more small thing.

Japanese words. I'm sure you guys all know these words if you are true blue Love Hina fans (or anime fans in general), and I generally dislike using Japanese words even though it is so tempting to write "Arigatou," "Ano," "Demo," "Hai," or whatever else I could write, but when calling people's names I have to keep to the original. So I will discuss how I do names (as far as I know, I'm right in this. Tell me if I'm wrong).

First off, I always write the last name first when I use the full name. The Japanese always do, so I figure I might as well do that here. And the suffixes that I use are as follows (as best as I understand it)

"-san" is a suffix for formality, if you don't know that person real well. You also usually attach it to a last name as opposed to the first name, because they call people by their last name more often if they don't know them well (even kids in school, cause they aren't that rude) It's sort of like Mr. or Ms., so Urashima-san is like Mr. Urashima but that just sounds so odd I don't like writing it.

"-chan" is a term that is used for people younger than you, usually by a significant amount. It is also usually reserved for close friends, usually girls, although I have seen it attached to boys' names as well.

"-sempai" or just "Sempai" is a term for someone that you respect a lot that is often older than you that can teach you something. So, for example, if you were to join a sport in high school and you are close to a senior who can teach you a lot, you might call him sempai if you were Japanese. It is, however, not really formal and you have to be closer to them to use this term. As far as I can tell, it can be attached to last names or first names.

These are the terms I used in this chapter, but here are others I just _might_ use.

"sama" is a term for someone that you really _really_ respect. You might use this term when addressing someone a lot higher then you, like the president, or principal of the school. Sometimes, as I have seen in various animes, "sama" is used for someone who the main character has fallen in love with obsessively. If you had a love stalker, they might use this with you.

"-kun" is a term reserved for boys younger than you, or close male friends. This usually is for making the name cuter, so often times the name is cut off to make it cuter. Instead of "Keitaro-kun" it could be "Kei-kun." However, I think both are correct but the cuter form is reserved for people that know you really well as well. In the original Love Hina, Mutsumi uses Kei-kun as opposed to Keitaro-kun when she finds out that they all knew each other when they were really young. In this, when there are childhood friends often they shorten the name (because little children can't pronounce the long name, just like in English), so Naru becomes "Na-chan" and Mutsumi becomes "Mu-chan."

Last but not least, no suffix I think means you are sometimes even closer than when you use the "chan" or "kun" suffix, but this is the most uncertain part, because I can't tell, but in any case walking up to someone and just saying their name without a suffix is pretty rude. Just like if you walked up to a stranger and called them by their first name.

I don't know if this has helped anyone, because it may be confusing. On the other hand, I don't believe anyone reading this doesn't know this, so this was actually written to make myself feel better that in _case_ anyone is confused they can read this and understand. On the plus side, if _I_ am confused about any of these, I hope you guys will correct me. Thanks for reading, and please R&R!


	3. Cram School Buddies Forever!

Urashima Keitaro, Super Spy

Disclaimer: Love Hina, all related characters and likeness are not mine. In fact, if they were the whole story would have been different and Keitaro wouldn't have ended up with Naru. Not that I hate her or anything.

A/N: This story is fun to write, just because it's an AU and I get to start everything from the beginning again. Hmm…I'm sure you guys really want to know who agent 888 is, and this is the chapter to be revealed! It may shock you! But in any case, I'll comment on my decision in my blurb at the end. Oh, and I also realized that I don't really check my story for grammar mistakes or consistency, but I thank you for understanding! Of course, if this was a real book I would have someone to do that for me but since it's so much effort just to type it I'm so eager to release it before checking it…err…that doesn't sound too good. Maybe I'll start checking it now…Thanks for reading, and please R&R!

"…" Denotes speech

_Italics_ Denotes thought

**Bold** Denotes sound effects

Certain Sounds:

**GOOMPH! **Means Fainting/Face-Faulting

**DOOONG!** Means Shock

::blah:: Denotes time/time change

----------------------------------- Denotes a scene/scene change

Chapter 2: Cram School Buddies Forever!! How long is "forever," by the way?

---------------------------------------------Cram School-----------------------------------------------

::8:00 AM::

"Keitaro! How are you doing?" Agent 055 asked.

"Broken anything yet?" Agent 996 said, to which Keitaro sighed. Agents 055 and 996. These two buffoons.

"You knew about this place didn't you?" Keitaro asked. These agents had been the ones that had told Keitaro what a _beautiful_ and _calm_ place this was. "You two are big fat liars."

"Me?" Agent 055 asked. "Never!"

"When would we ever lie to the _great_ and _noble_ agent 4?" Agent 996.

"Shut up," Keitaro said. "You two always get me in trouble." It was true. Besides the times when he and agent 888 had gotten in to trouble on the mission itself, Agent 055 and Agent 996 had been the ones to get both of them, and later, him, into the domestic trouble. They pulled pranks on them and it always seemed that they were somehow responsible when they hadn't done a single thing. Once, in fact, when the PHB was getting nervous about his hair and bought a toupee, they had stolen it and hidden it in Keitaro's drawer. This drawer, however, held a lot more than just regular files. It included a folder of all of the escapades of Agent 055 and 996, but instead the numbers were graciously replaced with 4 and 888. Needless to say, the scolding they got later had not been pretty.

"Well well well…planning to get into a bit of trouble I see?" the cram teacher asked. "I would ask of you three to not make a fool of yourselves. This class is for the highest and brightest, so even though you got high recommendations from your old cramming school, I suggest you get seated so we may begin. This is not high school—there will be no introductions and no tomfoolery! This class will determine your future! Now, Keitaro, Shirai, and Haitani, go sit down!" And the teacher left.

"Yeah _Shirai_!" Agent 996 mocked.

"Go sit down, _Haitani_," Agent 055 said.

"You two are stupid," Keitaro said, and sat down away from them. He glanced at them once more; they were sticking their tongue out at him. _Children,_ he thought, although in reality they were the same age.

"Is no one sitting here?" Keitaro turned to see a girl with huge, thick glasses ask him.

"Um no—" he started to say, but suddenly she squeaked and backed away. _Uh…am I that repulsive?_ Keitaro thought. There had been something of a hole in his life ever since that day in 2000 when agent 888 left him. Yes, he had only been 15, and she had only been 14, but they had…something. Ever since then, he had never seen her again; she had left for some extensive long-term (and probably boring) mission and he had been assigned active duty short fast-action missions. Had he been in love? Whatever it was, he had no clue where she was now and they were only young teenagers who knew nothing. Okay, they did know 654 ways to get a neurotoxin out from a dying man and approximately 531 ways to disarm someone using a pencil and a chopstick (and don't even start on how many ways they could _kill_ someone), but about _real_ life and matters that were _important_…? No…

"You!! Young lady, sit down!" the teacher yelled. "I don't care if you're the top pre-college scholar in the nation, you still have to listen to me!" _The top scholar in the __**nation**_ Keitaro thought. _Good. Well, it does fit her. She looks pretty nerdy._ She turned her head, looked at Keitaro, frowned, and then sat down. _But I guess,_ Keitaro thought,_ I look pretty nerdy too._ He had been, of course, "disguised" so to speak. He was given civilian clothing, but then to top it off, the guys in the costume department decided to add glasses—not just normal ones that might look good, but thick, square, and all in all, nerdy, glasses even though he had 20/20 vision (the agency made sure that its agents did). He was also 90 sure agent 055 and 996 had requested this glasses addition so that their nerdy-look was added to.

"First up, everyone, is math. Please try hard to understand…"

::Four hours later::

"And that is when you use the word "whom" instead of "who." Believe it or not, many English-speaking people use both words incorrectly and—" **BRRIIIIIINNG!!**

"Oh thank goodness!" Keitaro exclaimed as everyone stood up to stretch.

"Remember people. Enjoy your lunch break but be back here at 1:00pm SHARP!!" the teacher yelled over the clamor. Keitaro looked over at the girl sitting next to him, but she had hurriedly packed up her things and left. _Oh well,_ Keitaro thought. He had wanted to ask her a question, but it could wait; Keitaro wasn't exactly eager to find out the answer why she kept glancing at him and didn't speak a single word to him, even when he had asked her for an extra sheet of lined paper. She had just simply handed it over to him.

"Hey Keitaro!" Shirai said. "I thought someone from your dorm was supposed to be in this class?"

"Yeah, what gives? Did you recognize anyone?" Haitani asked. Keitaro thought for a bit.

"No," he said. Truth to be told, he had been so bothered and preoccupied by the girl next to him that he had forgotten that he was supposed to be in the same class as…Narusegawa Naru. His demeanor sank even lower.

"Keitaro?" Shirai asked.

"Whatever," Haitani said. "Never mind, we'll look after lunch. Right now…let's go eat! And score chicks!!" He marched towards the lunch room solidly while chuckling.

"Let's go…before Haitani makes a scene," Shirai said. Keitaro got up and slowly followed him. They entered the lunch room and Keitaro was immediately taken back to his days at the academy.

"Heh, this is like the academy," Keitaro said. Shirai nodded.

"Yeah, this cram school is very intensive. Not only is it one of the few all day cram schools, the rivalry in here is so high they've had suicide problems. Related mainly, of course, when people _don't_ get in to their college of choice. It's not surprising the top-rated student in the nation is here," Shirai explained.

The three sat down at a booth.

"We need a girl here," Haitani said.

"Hah, how about that girl that you were sitting next to all morning?" Shirai asked. Keitaro shook his head.

"Nah…she's really weird, I mean," Keitaro lowered his voice and whispered into Shirai's ear. "I spent a whole morning next to her and she didn't say one word. _One word!_" Shirai sat straight up and mused over this.

"Maybe," he said, "Just maybe…she was so love struck that she couldn't say anything!" Keitaro looked at Shirai like one would stare at a pet rock at the zoo. It's dead and boring and you don't know why it would be on display.

"What are you nuts?" Keitaro asked. Shirai laughed as he took out his lunch.

"Not really," he said. "So how did you do on the test?" Keitaro made a "pfft!" sound.

"Are you kidding? I know nothing about this stuff! It adds to my credibility as a two-year ronnin I bet." Haitani, who was in the middle of eating his lunch, also made a "pfft!" sound.

"You're just saying that to sound smarter. I bet you couldn't even do that if you were trained to," Haitani said.

"Oh yeah? Who got 100 on all of their training tests?" Keitaro asked. "And who failed about 50 of their tests, not becoming a full-fledged agent until they were 18?"

"Ok ok…we get the point," Shirai said. Haitani snorted.

"I don't! I've always been smarter than you! I knew it, but those instructors didn't! Just because you had a little bit of talent—"

"A lot of talent," Shirai said.

"A _little_ bit of talent," Haitani continued, "They all favored you and ignored my brilliance! Did you see my paper on wave neutrinos?" Haitani was standing on the table now.

"That was my paper," Shirai said.

"Ah…oh yeah," Haitani realized. "Right. But did you—"

"MASAYUKI HAITANI!!! SIT DOWN AND SHUT UP!" the teacher suddenly yelled across the room. He sat down sulking.

"Anyways, I definitely knew all of that – it's grade school stuff," Haitani said. They continued to eat until it was almost 1:00.

"I guess we should head back," Keitaro said, standing up.

"Keitaro, watch—" Shirai started but it was too late. **BAAM!** A girl that had been running past their table slammed into him and they both went down. When Keitaro opened his eyes, he suddenly realized that he was staring at her chest…then realized his hands were ON her chest.

"You…YOU PERVERT!!!" the other girl screamed, and with a power punch to match a shotgun, Keitaro was hit in the stomach and slammed against the wall. "Don't TOUCH me!!"

"Wow!" Shirai and Haitani said, coming over, leaning over Keitaro. "You okay?"

"I've…been better," Keitaro said weakly. "But…" he said curiously, "I've also been the same…"

"Hmm…?" Shirai asked.

"Never mind. Let's go back," Keitaro said. Shirai and Haitani picked Keitaro up and walked back to the classroom and sat back down.

"So what did they feel like?" Haitani asked just as they were about to sit.

"What? What are they?" Keitaro asked.

"You know…her breasts," Haitani said.

"No comment," Keitaro said, walking away to his seat.

"You should grow up and put that behind you," Keitaro heard Shirai tell Haitani as he walked away, to which Keitaro could only imagine some heated reply. He was, however, more focused on what had just happened with that girl. He has felt that punch before, and, even more disturbing, he had felt her…well, he didn't really want to think about it, but it would explain why when she had sat down by him she had been curiously silent. She was Narusegawa Naru! She had to be! And he had to sit next to her? She came back to the seat and sat down, carefully avoiding eye contact with him. He looked at her a bit more, then realized without the glasses and with her hair down she would look _exactly_ like Narusegawa Naru. There was no doubt about it.

"You're Narusegawa, aren't you?" Keitaro asked, deciding just to get it over with. She squeaked, but didn't reply.

"You don't have to pretend you don't know me anymore. I know you hate me, and I don't like you very much either, so we can just ignore each other," Keitaro said, and he turned back to his side of the desk. _I guess,_ he thought, _I just ruined the part about getting to know the tenants more though this girl who goes to the same cram school. Maybe I should just stop coming…oh right, I'm supposed to be a ronin. What else would I do but come to a cram school?_ Suddenly he felt a tap on his shoulder.

"You…don't like me?" Narusegawa asked. Keitaro cringed. Maybe he shouldn't have said that.

"Well, ah," he said, turning back to her.

"May I remind you that it was _you_ who touched _my_ breasts!!" Naru hissed at him.

"Ah—," Keitaro started.

"Twice! Just now as well!" Naru continued to hiss.

"Yeah, but I—"

"And then you dare say that you don't like me? What did I ever do to _you_ for you not to like me? I can hate you, but you are not allowed to hate me!" Naru whispered harshly. _What kind of logic is that?_ Keitaro thought.

"You two!" the cram teacher suddenly shouted. "No talking during class! Listen to our discourse on Japanese history!"

"Sorry," Keitaro and Naru both said, bowing their heads.

"We'll talk about this back at the Hinata-Sou," Naru hissed one last time, then fell silent.

--------------------------------------------Hinata-Sou-----------------------------------------

"BAH!" Kitsune shouted out in extreme boredom. There was, _again_, nothing to do. She had recently run out of money (or more correctly, Narusegawa had run out of money) and couldn't go to any bars close by. There was no way she would try to get any from Haruka's tea house; the last time she tried was an ample reminder of _that_. "Oh, if only Keitaro had not gone to cramming school with Naru. I can only imagine what they're doing now…"

----------------------------------------------Bullet Train--------------------------------------

"Get," Naru hissed very violently, "Your hand OFF my butt!!!!!"

"I'm sorry!!!" Keitaro cried, immediately releasing his hand. And no, it hadn't been that he had tried to do that like some perverted old man. This train ride, for some reason or another, had been the worst train ride in his life. Not physically – one time he actually had to ride on the top of the train using a kitchen knife to hold on to the shiny metal in order to take down a target; or was it to protect a target? He didn't know, because right now his thoughts were very very clouded. Every turn, every jerk had somehow pushed, shoved, or in the very least landed an intimate part of Narusegawa on to his body, and, of course, every time Keitaro blushed a deep red and hardened his body because Narusegawa would sock him one then and there. In fact, he was waiting…there. **BAM!** _Ow…she hit me in the shin,_ Keitaro thought. _She fights dirty._ She did, but Keitaro supposed it was to stop people from doing exactly what he had been doing by accident.

"Emergency stop!!!" **SHOVE!! BAM!!! TOUCH**♥!! _Again? How many stops have there been? And how many_–

"Get your hand off my chest!!" Naru hissed again.

"Sorry!" Keitaro apologized. **BAM!** Sadly, this train ride had been 30 min long. Thirty minutes of agony. It's not like he **wanted** to touch…well…it's not that he minded it that much, but that…never mind.

"What's your problem?!!!" Naru asked. Suddenly the train stopped and the doors opened.

"Hinata-Sou. Please step off with caution," the PA rang. **SQUISH! BAAAM!!**

"Can a girl GET home without being molested?!!!" Naru shouted at him. He was on the ground as this time Naru had socked him hard in the stomach before he had been ready.

"Ah!" Keitaro cried as Naru stomped off. Everyone was staring at him. "Uh…" Suddenly the doors closed again. "No! That was my stop!!"

"Mommy, what's a molested?" a little boy asked. The mom shushed him and everyone turned away from him.

"Ah…" Keitaro sighed, and stared out the window glumly.

----------------------------------------Hinata-Sou---------------------------------------------

"I'm back!!" Naru announced once she entered the living room.

"Oh, good, where's our manager?" Kitsune asked, getting up from her makeshift bed that other people like to call the sofa.

"What? I don't know and who cares?" Naru said, dumping her bag on the table in front of the TV and sitting down on a cushioned seat besides the TV.

"Oh, so you did meet him at your cramming school," Kitsune said. Naru turned to face Kitsune quickly.

"What?! You knew that?" she asked.

"Well, he told us right after you left," Kitsune mused, rubbing her chin where her elbow was propped up on her other arm.

"Why didn't he tell me?!!" Naru asked violently.

"Probably because of what happened before," Kitsune said. "Say…don't tell me something happened again and that's why he's not here." Naru grabbed the TV remote and turned it on.

"No." The TV made a lot of noise as some battle scene from some anime blazed across the screen. Kitsune sighed.

"When," she asked Naru, "have you ever been able to lie to me?" Naru continued to watch the fight intently. "Naru, aren't we best friends?" Kitsune waited. _One…two…three…_

"Ok ok, but it was all his fault! Not only did he grope me during school, he touched me during the whole train ride back! And he also had the gall to tell me he didn't like me! So of course he deserved whatever he got. I hope he fell into a gutter and a dog bit his butt," Naru shouted, then turned the TV off. "What time is it? Isn't it time to eat?" she ask irritably. When she was irritable, she got hungry.

"Oh, it's about 5:30. I think, though, Shinobu-chan is waiting for her 'Sempai' to come back so he can teach her how to cook or she can show him where everything is or something like that," Kitsune said. Shinobu, who had just been entering the living room from the kitchen to see if he had indeed come back, blushed. "I think someone has a crush."

"No no I don't! It's nothing!" Shinobu argued.

"Oh? If it's nothing how did he become a Sempai so quick? We've only known him for a day. Maybe Keitaro-sama is more appropriate?" Kitsune teased.

"No! I swear, there is nothing like that going on!" Shinobu said, almost crying at this point. "I don't have a crush on him!"

"Don't have a crush on who?" Su asked, jumping down the stairs.

"Keitaro," Kitsune replied.

"Kitsune!" Shinobu complained. "Don't tease me!"

"Keitaro! Keitaro! Shinobu has a crush on Keitaro!!" Su sang. Shinobu blushed.

"Su! Stop it!" Shinobu cried. Su stopped dancing for a moment.

"Don't worry Shinobu, I love him a lot too!" Su said. The Hinata-Sou went quiet for a while. "?" Su asked.

"Hey guys! Ah…why so quiet?" Keitaro greeted entering.

"Don't call me so familiarly," Naru said, turning away.

"Ok…ah, dinner? Did you want me to make it, Maehara-chan?" Keitaro asked.

"I-if you want! And, um, you can call me Shinobu!" Shinobu said.

"Oh…ah, ok Shinobu-chan," Keitaro said. They entered the kitchen. Kitsune watched them go.

"Actually, they do look like Sempai and Kohai," she said. "I guess that's an adequate fit to them." She watched them through the doorway.

"Kitsune! I thought we were trying to kick him out!" Naru said. "Not say he looks like a Sempai to Shinobu!"

"Actually, that was just you and Motoko. I never minded. When guy comes here to live? How could I pass that up?" Kitsune asked.

"Grr….Kitsune!" Naru shouted. Kitsune only chuckled in response and turned on the TV, making Naru even more upset.

"Never mind, I'm going to study!" Naru shouted, then stomped up the stairs.

"Where's Naru going?" Motoko asked as she came down the stairs and saw Naru rush past her. ("Motoko!" Su cried, jumping on to her.)

"Oh I don't know…" Kitsune said. "Something about you and her kicking our manager out." Motoko came all the way down and stopped in front of the sofa.

"Hmm…" she said, thinking hard. "I've decided that he may not be that bad after all. And plus, if he left, he wouldn't be able to do my favor."

"Dinner!" Shinobu called.

"Yay!" Su cried bouncing in. Motoko and Kitsune followed suit, minus the bouncing.

"Oh, where did Naru-sempai go?" Shinobu asked.

"She stalked away to study. Don't worry, she doesn't need to eat," Kitsune said. "Ignore her!"

"Ah…you sure?" Keitaro asked. "I could just bring it up to her…" Kitsune chuckled.

"Well considering what has happened _recently_, I don't know if that would be such a good idea," Kitsune said, looking at Keitaro knowingly. He jerked back in surprise, figured out Narusegawa _must_ have told her, and sat down.

"Never mind," he said.

"Itadakimasu!!" Su cried, and they all started to eat.

--------------------------------------------Naru's Room--------------------------------------

"I don't care if they want to eat dinner with him like he's done nothing wrong! I won't touch any food of his from now on!" Naru shouted to herself. She took out a cup of instant noodles from her closet. "Anyways, I have to study if I want to do well on the upcoming weekly test for ranking. I always mess up the English section quite a bit, so let's start with that." She first took out the English book that they used in cramming school and opened it, starting to read. _Joan is trying to draw flower…Joan looks at flower to draw it…Joan likes to…no, loves to…ah…licks flowers? That's not right,_ Naru thought. She scratched her head, then wrote something down that made sense…she thought.

**Beep!** The electric water boiler mad a beeping noise to indicate it was done, and Naru stood up to pour it into her instant ramen cup. _This…is pretty sad,_ Naru suddenly thought. But her stubbornness pushed away that prideful thought and she poured it in to the cup anyways.

"Itadakimasu," she said, and then went back to her English. _Jack likes to eat potatoes. He makes them from…starch? What?_ Naru thought, trying to translate once more. **KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK!!**

"Go away whoever you are," Naru said to the door.

"But…don't you want to eat some dinner?" _Oh, it's __**him**_ Naru thought upon hearing Keitaro speak.

"I'm fine by myself…especially fine without _you_ here," Naru said. _That should get him to leave,_ Naru thought.

"You sure? It's fried noodles with roast pork!" Keitaro said.

"Yes! Now go away!" Naru shouted. She might have to hurt someone…after all, that was why she was here anyways.

"Ok ok…" Keitaro said, and Naru could hear him leave.

"Good," she told herself, and continued studying.

------------------------------------------------Kitchen-----------------------------------------

"No luck," Keitaro said, coming into the Kitchen. Kitsune made a triumphant snort.

"I told you she wouldn't eat it," Kitsune said. "Believe me, I've known her for a long time. When she becomes stubborn, she'll do anything."

"Ok ok…" Keitaro said. He started to clean up.

"Oh, let me help!" Shinobu cried, immediately standing up from her seat.

"No no, you made dinner," Keitaro said. "I can help do some dishes."

"I can help too!" Su cried. She whipped out a machine that looked like a hair dryer.

"A hair dryer?" Kitsune asked suspiciously. Su shook her head.

"Nope!" she said. "It's a portable heat ray that can melt titanium in under a minute!" Everyone was silent for a second.

"Uh, Su? We're trying to clean the dishes, not melt them," Keitaro said.

"Hah! You just watch!" Su said, and taking up all the dishes that had made it to sink by then, she held up the hair-dryer-portable-heat-ray device like a gun and aimed the nozzle at the plate. "Here we go! Machine washer setting!" **ZAAAP!**

"Woah!! The food's gone!" Keitaro exclaimed.

"It…actually worked?" Motoko asked. She took one of the plates that Su had just "cleaned."

"No way!" Kitsune said. She took the plate from Motoko. "It looks brand new!"

"Hey, all of my stuff works!" Su told them. "The bazooka that fired porcupines only blew up 'cause some one put too many porcupines in it!" A silence ensued.

"And, uh, where'd you get the porcupines?" Keitaro asked.

"Secret!!♥" Su sang, tossing the hair dryer to Keitaro. "Have fun!" she cried, bouncing out of the room. They all watched her leave.

"I'd better go and see what she's up to," Motoko said, leaving to follow her. Kitsune looked at Shinobu and Keitaro.

"No way I'm going to be around a machine that Su made, no matter if it worked the first time," Kitsune said, and sauntered out.

"Oh well. Should we use Su's heat ray or clean them normally?" Keitaro asked, holding up Su's machine.

"Uh…let's just wash them normally Sempai," Shinobu said. Suddenly she squeaked and almost dropped the plate she was holding. Had he heard her? It just slipped out and then…

"Woah! Watch out there Shinobu-chan. You almost dropped this," Keitaro replied, chuckling. He handed the plate back to Shinobu and started to collect the dishes to wash. Shinobu watched him, trying to not shake. She had called him sempai but he hadn't noticed? Maybe he just hadn't heard…maybe he ignored it as a slip of the tongue…but maybe he heard it and was just trying to play cool?

"Hey, don't just zombie out there," Keitaro said, holding all of the plates and setting them down in the sink. "We got dishes to be cleaned."

"Ye-yes sir," Shinobu said. _What is he thinking?_

-------------------------------------Naru's Room------------------------------------------

**BAM! **Naru's door slid open suddenly, and Naru turned around suddenly ready to hit someone.

"Oh, it's only you," Naru said, seeing Kitsune, and turned back to study.

"Only me? Why, I didn't know you were waiting for Keitaro to come in so much!" Kitsune said.

"You know what I mean," Naru mumbled, doing math now. "Let's see….x squared times 2yz…."

"Don't do that subject switch," Kitsune said. "I know you were waiting for him to come back in. That's why you made the door so hard to open and I had to use the secret latch to open it."

"Bah," Naru said, ignoring her.

"Fine. You're such a stubborn girl. You missed a good meal, by the way," Kitsune said. Naru answered by holding up her empty cup of instant ramen.

"I'm full," she said.

"Haha," Kitsune chuckled. "You're also pathetic."

"Shut up," Naru said. Kitsune opened one eye at her, then closed it again.

"You know, you also missed out on a great conversation. We learned many interesting things about Keitaro," Kitsune said.

"Like that matters," Naru said.

"Like how he can't swim," Kitsune said.

"That's nice."

"And how his family owns a bakery store."

"That's nice."

"And I think he likes you," Kitsune said.

"Oh that's…WHAT?!!" Naru said, jerking out of her trance.

"I'm kidding," Kitsune said, laughing at her. Naru suddenly turned red in embarrassment at her outburst.

"Hahaha!" Kitsune laughed. "I got you good." Naru glared at her, turned back around, and continued to study.

"Come on. It's just a joke," Kitsune said. Naru mumbled something offensive. Kitsune shrugged her shoulders.

"Whatever," she said, then exited the room. Kitsune looked back at the closed door and smiled. "I've got something here," she said, then walked down the hall in search of someone else to bother.

-------------------------------------------Keitaro's Room------------------------------------

**Plop!** Keitaro dropped his books on the table in the middle of his room and collapsed. It had been a tiring day and he just couldn't take much more. No one had really told him it was going to be this exciting all the time here…_What time is it?_ He glanced at his watched and confirmed the time: 6:30 PM. Perfect time to start on his muscle training – if he didn't keep it up his muscles were in danger of atrophying and, more importantly, transforming into fat. Fat was an ugly thing, to say nothing of the health detriments of having a body full of fat.

"1…2…3…" he grunted as he started off his abs workout. He was lucky that he COULD work out everyday, it was like a chance to relax, to forget about anything but persevering through the physical pain of exercise. He finished his abs and continued on to do pushups.

"1…2…3…" he counted, slowly going all the way down and back all the way up. 100 pushups, piece of cake, the basic requirements for him to keep healthy. _Hmm….I may need to join a gym,_ Keitaro thought. He realized that if the job was this easy he wouldn't have that much chance to exercise…but then again, as a ronin he's really not supposed to be able to have time to exercise. Technically right now he should be reviewing. The sad part was that he actually didn't remember anything in the grade school. He hadn't studied it, of course, instead had been taken at an early age to be trained in the ways of the agency. Of course this did include basic skills, but as for complex math and Japanese history? He did excel in English language, as he had to know it to blend in better with different surroundings, but that was about the most he knew. _Man…doing this is almost more work than being an agent,_ he thought. **SLIDE!! ** Suddenly Keitaro's door slid open. _Remind me to buy a lock,_ he thought.

"Hiya Keitaro!" Su said, smiling from the doorway. Keitaro, who had been in the middle of a one handed pushup, suddenly collapsed on the floor.

"Owww…" he said, knowing that somehow if anybody found out he somehow was really strong, it would ruin his credibility. He tried to cover it up. "Haha, I guess Shirai was right, I'm too weak to even attempt one of those…how are you Su?" he asked, hoping she would leave soon. She, out of all of the tenants in the Hinata-Sou, scared him the most because of her crazy inventions. Just one day had been enough for him to confirm she was a mad scientist. She smiled again, and closed the door with her foot.

"I'm…good," she said, walking in and sitting down right next to Keitaro's head. This had Keitaro going for a while. What? What was that he just heard? Su was…good? He remembered the past times he had asked her this question. The first time ended with a bouncing up and down and a new invention then smoke, a lot of smoke. The second time ended up with a long wild explanation on the going ons of how one day she was going to catch a wild turtle and turn it into her assistant and then they were going to take over the world. The third time had, he now painfully remembered, ended in a kick to the head and the contents kitchen cabinet falling on him, almost killing him. _Had it not been for that mission to Brazil…I would have died when that pot slammed on my head._ But he never had heard…good? And now she was sitting so plainly next to him? There had to be a secret plan.

"Are you…feeling well?" he asked, sitting as well. He tentatively reached out a hand, shaking as he did so because for all he knew Su would bite his hand. But he managed to place it on her forehead, and then he placed on his with no effect.

"No, I'm fine…" Su said. She looked away. "Ah…" That vital glance away made him suspicious of something that he knew couldn't be…

"Are you…the contact here?" Keitaro suddenly asked. He had this gut feeling that the way she was acting now could only be make sense if this was true. And not only that, he also suddenly realized if she wasn't that he would have no satisfactory explanation of why he just asked her that were it not the case.

"I…oh, agent four, I've missed you so much!!" Su suddenly cried and launched herself onto Keitaro with a great big hug. Shock hit him almost as hard as Su did, and his chest constricted almost as tight as Su was gripping him. _Why? I mean, she's just an agent? Is she scared, is she…wait…_

"Su…I…I can't breathe," Keitaro managed to gasp.

"Oh! I'm sorry!" Su said, and released him, but she looked nervous and excited. Keitaro still was shocked…why did she act like that? It was very unprofessional. "Do you…not recognize me?" Su asked him, and suddenly everything made sense. Or at least, most things made sense.

"Agent 888!" Keitaro exclaimed. "Wait…_you're_ the contact here?" Now he knew why the PHB had said "it's been a few years."

"Yes," Su replied. "And…I'm so glad you're here! I can't tell you how much I've missed working with you!" She again hugged him, and Keitaro felt something he hadn't felt for a long time…peace. This was something that he always managed to have whenever he was on a mission her. He felt a gentle wave of peace come over him as Su, or more accurately, Agent 888, hugged him and the 4 years of separation that they had had seemed to melt away in a moment. Agent 888 released him, but held on to his hand.

"There's been something I wanted to tell you all of this time that I've been, away, you see I think I…" Agent 888 started to say but suddenly without warning the door flew open and Naru stood in it, glaring at the both of them. Keitaro noticed that he was still holding Agent 888's hand; so did Naru.

"YOU FREAKIN PERVERT!" she yelled, smashing Keitaro in a face and turning him into a ball that smashed into the opposite wall resulting in a spread eagle Keitaro outline on the wall as he crumpled to the ground. "SHE'S ONLY IN MIDDLE SCHOOL!" Su bounced up, immediately resuming her role as the bouncy crazy foreigner.

"But I really like Keitaro!" she said, smiling. Motoko, who had entered after Naru had very nicely performed a football punt on Keitaro's head, nodded.

"Urashima may not be that bad, but indeed, Su, I can only advise you to stay away so nothing can happen…let's go," Motoko said, pulling Su with her.

"Awww…." Su said, but she winked at Keitaro as she left, mouthing the words "I'll be back."

"And STAY away from her," Naru yelled. "The ONLY contact I have to have with you is at cram school!! Don't make it any more than that!!!" And she slammed the door so hard she almost broke the wooden frame. But Keitaro didn't care about Naru's threat, for he could only mumble in astonishment,

"Su…is agent 888?"

A/N: So there you have it!! Su is agent 888! I found it quite hilarious that no one guessed it before, since I thought I dropped enough hints (if you look at the description of agent 888 in the prologue it matches Su's description…at least sort of, and I guess since I'm the author it was obvious), but it came to me that Su was the perfect person to be agent 888 cause of all the crazy inventions she had and plus I've wanted to do a Su/Keitaro fic cause it's not done that often. So to assuage all of you, I'm not doing a Naru/Keitaro fic, I've learned many people a.) don't like them and b.) they're boring cause the actual manga series does that. So here's for one more chapter, and maybe _just maybe_ I release another one before the sun turns into a rock.


	4. Enter Koalla Su: Agent 888!

Urashima Keitaro, Super Spy

Disclaimer: Love Hina, all related characters and likeness are not mine. In fact, if they were the whole story would have been different and Keitaro wouldn't have ended up with Naru. Not that I hate her or anything.

A/N: Yay, another chapter, and thank you to whoever is reading this. That's all I have to say. Let's get started already!!

"…" Denotes speech

_Italics_ Denotes thought

**Bold** Denotes sound effects

::blah:: Denotes time/time change

----------------------------------- Denotes a scene/scene change

Chapter 3: Enter Koalla Su: Agent 888!

-------------------------------------------------Keitaro's Room---------------------------------------

::7:30 pm::

"Su…Agent 888…" Keitaro mumbled. His thoughts whirled in his mind after he was left alone. His exercises were long forgotten…missing one day wouldn't hurt him that much anyways. At least that's what he thought.

"Agent 888…" he again mumbled. What is this? Why would she appear out of the blue again? Keitaro smiled, caught himself smiling, then coughed loudly and embarrassingly even though no one else was in the room. Their missions four years ago and more danced around in his head and he sighed and lay back down, thinking of when he had first met Agent 888. "Agent 888…Su…zzzzzzzzzz…" he mumbled.

"Agent four? Agent four, wake up!!" a middle aged man yelled, slamming his fist down on his desk. Keitaro suddenly woke up in the middle of a classroom to the soundtrack of his classmates laughing at him. It was in the middle of the afternoon.

"Wha-wha, I'm sorry!" Keitaro said, standing up quickly and bowing in apology. The teacher looked at him suspiciously through one eye, then turned back to the board.

"Just because you're young for the class and smart doesn't mean you get to sleep in class!!" He said, writing down gibberish on the board. "Ok, class now here is the most important part. The basic chemistry structure of this poison is like this, with the amino group here and you see that other group? Yes, exactly, so what will be the best way to neutralize it? Yes, Agent 888?"

"The best way would be to threaten the person who poisoned you into giving you the antidote," Agent 888 responded. The class cheered while the teacher's face dropped.

"The _real_ answer if you would, Agent 888?" he asked again. Agent 888 smiled once more.

"I believe that in any given situation, you wouldn't have the chemical components necessary to create an antidote in the working time of the poison anyways, if you happened to even know what poison they used if they even used one already known. Thus I would have to come to the conclusion that yes, indeed, the _real_ answer, Mr. C, is the answer that I have previously given," Agent 888 said. Mr. C frowned, clearly angry because as a fact the teachers were never supposed to show much emotion as a rule of conduct.

"Agent 888 if I have to ask you one more time—" Mr. C began, but, as it turned out, he would have to ask her one more time because just then everybody's ear-implanted receivers rang, signifying the end of class.

"Whoops, sorry!" Agent 888 said, smiling as everyone stood up and prepared for the next class. No one had book bags because, well, you were supposed to memorize everything.

"You better know the answer next class," Mr. C called out as a mass of students rushed out the door. "And no more stall tactics!!" Agent Four, Keitaro, was one of the last ones out the door and heard Mr. C mumble something about the lack of respect teachers got nowadays. _Whatever_, Keitaro thought. The older agents all had letters, but when the agency started to recruit too many students to fit the alphabet, they had resorted to numbers out of a number generator. There was no real rhyme or reason to what number anyone got, but clearly Keitaro had been cursed with an unlucky one. He was quite young for his class, indeed the only 8 year old to be so close to real missions, but now any fame he might have had for it was given to the new agent 888 who was one year younger than him! Everyone else in his class was 10 at least and some were even as old as 16! However popular the new agent 888 was, Keitaro knew she also managed to be the nicest girl and most people loved her, making Agent Four old news. He didn't hate her for this, it had just been nice when he had some spotlight too and he could take any of the abuse that came with it. But now all he had left was the abuse and no spotlight…it was better to sleep through classes (he aced them all anyways) and hope that he would soon get some real missions. Of course now was gym period, which meant simulation exercises.

Simulation exercises were the best part of training. He hated the book learning. It was really dreadful and induced little to no amount of interest in Keitaro. In fact, ever since he was conscious he had been browsing through these books and took such an interest in it that when he started classes it was all too easy. Of course for things like simulation exercises nothing can really make up for experience so the gym classes were the most challenging parts of the day. This also meant that the older kids had an actual chance of bettering him, but Keitaro often won as well. Most of the time they were single man operation simulations, but recently they were starting to add partnered simulations because of the change in policy in the agency. There had been a movement, or so Keitaro had heard from the teachers, for partnered missions as they increased the chances of success. There were raging debates on this, however, as partners could also prove a hindrance if they were incompetent and forced the other partner to save them. This lead to some sort of policy change where, as Keitaro believed, Agents were supposed to erase emotional attachment for their partners so that the mission could be completed. Goals of most missions given by the agency did not include preserving life as a top priority.

"Today we will have a partnered simulation," Ms. H was saying, Keitaro suddenly realized. His demeanor sank a bit. While he did not personally mind partners, it would always seemed he was paired up with kids that were much older than him (those that were 10 may have been alright to deal with) and so those future agents, while physically capable, did not know as much as Keitaro did and refused to listen when Keitaro gave orders that would many times have been able to win them the simulation. Somehow, no matter who Agent 888 was partnered with, however, they always seemed to obey her. _Maybe it's because she's a girl,_ Keitaro mused. Oh well, whoever paired up with Agent 888 would win anyways. Her agent number was lucky, after all.

"Agent four, go with agent 48," Ms. H ordered. _Here we go again,_ Keitaro mused, knowing that agent 48 was a 13 year old with an especially bad attitude. Maybe he could "die" early in the simulation and sit it out…

"No no no, Ms. H, I want to be with Agent four!" Keitaro froze for a moment. Wait, who had just said that?

"But Agent 888, we have already assigned groups and teams and such to make it as fair as possible, and if you were to be with agent four…" Ms. H began but was cut off.

"But in a real life situation, if you think about it, the people who are most likely to end up as partners would be Agent four and me! I haven't even gotten to pair up with him one time this entire school year, why not just this once? We're the closest to age to each other and also the closest to graduating from this class. The next class up only runs partnered simulations based on actual partners that the agency will assign, aka the partner you'll have in the upcoming missions. Why can't I meet my partner now so we'll both be as prepared as we can be for the next time?" Ms. H hesitated, but seeing the weak logic in her retort and the amount of effort she would have to put in to make it successful, sighed and gave in.

"Ok, ok, have it your way. Agent four, you're with agent 888, agent 48, you're with 902," she said. Agent 888 walked over to Keitaro, who was still in shock. When did…wasn't that…but before any coherent thought came to him Agent 888 stuck out her hand and smiled.

"Hi! I'm Agent 888, as you probably know," she introduced.

"Agent four," Keitaro replied slowly, not sure what to think. Here this most popular girl had come up to him, presently the most unpopular guy, and basically declared they were future partners.

"I figure this introduction is also fake," Agent 888 mused, her hand on her chin. "Okay! My real name is Koalla Su!" Keitaro was shocked once again because agents were under a contract never to reveal their real names to each other. Wouldn't that make her more vulnerable to him? Or, wait, is she just being really nice? Not knowing what else to do, Keitaro responded likewise.

"My name is Urashima Keitaro," he said, and Agent 888 smiled, always with that grin. It disarmed people, made Keitaro uneasy. There was a silence in the air that hung about the both of them.

"I have a feeling," Agent 888 said, disrupting the still silence that had just begun to exist so pleasantly, "This moment will be very important. It will go down in history!" Keitaro suddenly laughed, squashing the silence out of this dimension and bringing in a totally new atmosphere.

"And why is that?" he asked.

"Why? Must you ask why? Clearly the meeting of two of the Agency's greatest agents and future best partner group will be historical!" Agent 888 cried out.

"Oh…I see," Keitaro said in response.

**BAAAAM!!!** Suddenly a book fell from off the shelf and shook Keitaro's pleasant dream off, making him sit up straight suddenly. As a natural reflex he took out the knife that was hidden in his wrist holder, but seeing that nothing was there put it back in place feeling a bit foolish that he had fallen asleep in the first place.

"What was I in the middle of doing anyways?" he asked himself, then remembering started to do one-handed push-ups again. _Su…of course, I have forgotten her real name because had I ever used it at the agency we would have been split up immediately. Not that we weren't anyways,_ Keitaro thought. He remembered after that particular day of training he had just dreamed about he had excitedly gone home and written her name down…somewhere. Keitaro suddenly was very anxious that he couldn't remember where. Maybe he had thrown it away? He didn't even know if he had written it down on a piece of paper or stored it digitally.

He finished his push-ups and started on his set of 5 minute plank exercises. _ Maybe I thought I would remember it always…_ Keitaro thought. He had in his dream at least; if you think about it that way he was pretty responsible after all. _Or that I only was able to remember it in my subconscious because I erased my memory of it?_ Keitaro didn't even know what and how he did with any really personal and secret stuff, because in actuality he had to forget it so the agency didn't know. But he always left himself clues…Keitaro sighed. Forgetting things was such a complicated process; he decided to forget about it. Finished with his exercises after another short 30 minute routine, he decided to actually study for cram school. To prepare for his tests, he hadn't actually studied anything because he had been too busy with other preparations – mainly it involved a lot of civilian training because the agency knew that its agents were probably a most…unique bunch, to put it nicely. _To be frank without that training a lot more things might have gone wrong,_ he thought. He started to read the math section of the book. Of course Keitaro was a genius, so although before just today he hadn't been able to do any of the math questions, once he read through the books he could ace it. Not that he was supposed to because technically he was retarded. Keitaro once again recalled his profile: A 19 year old twice failed ronin studying for the entrance exams to Tokyo University. Not only had he failed twice, he had failed it miserably with an average of 48. He sighed again. He often felt the profiling guys had fun making the most ridiculous situations for the agents to be in because their job was so boring, so by doing this they can have the most fun. Although, he was actually 19 so maybe that was why this scenario came up…_Wait a minute,_ Keitaro thought. _So that means Agent 888 is 18!! How come she is pretending to be 14?_ Keitaro remembered the introductions: "And this is Koalla Su, 14, in middle school….DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT TOUCHING HER." Of course it had been Naru who had introduced everyone.

Keitaro looked at his watch again. 8:12pm. _Hmm…_it was still a while before 12, when he would have to report and quite frankly he was bored of reading math. It basically was ridiculously easy. He stood up and stretched. Time for a bath.

----------------------------------Hinata-Sou Living Room----------------------------------

::8:15 PM::

"In the news today, there was a fire in the Kanagawa Neverland Amusement Park. Several reports indicate the fire started in the wine exhibit where a local resident tried to drink wine while smoking at the same time. Of course, this particular resident was also drunk and tried to light the wine and ended up drinking the wine that was on fire unprepared. No one is absolutely sure what happened next, but the following video of the ensuing chaos was captured."

"Hey guys, come down, I'm on TV!!" Kitsune yelled to no one in particular, but several residents popped into the living room anyways, most notably Naru who was supposed to be studying.

"What did you do now?" Naru asked. Kitsune mocked offense.

"Why I'm insulted you even would think I—," she began but then the video on the TV showed what happened.

"You notice it is quite clear that this particular local resident lights her drink on fire. Notice her cheeks are already flushed, indicating she is already drunk," the TV anchorman said. The video stopped and Kitsune's face was circled on the screen. "Then she puts the drink in her mouth. However the intense unexpected heat of the fire causes her to spit it out on the bartender in front of her and then…chaos." On screen Kitsune gulped down the drink that was on fire, then immediately fell backwards off her stool while spitting out the drink that was on fire all over the bartender in front of her that had just been about to stop her. Crying in pain he stumbled back against the back wall where all the other alcohol is stored, causing several bottles to fall down and break all over the man and the counter and the floor where immediately a roaring fire started. Yells erupted from the recording and it became shaky as people all around screamed and ran around in panic. And then just as suddenly the recording went to static.

"The recording ends here. Luckily there was no loss of life and the only injuries are that of the bartender who suffered superficial burns because he was wearing thick clothes that he took off in time. He is not pressing charges, however the Kanagawa Neverland tells us that they plan to charge this resident for unbecoming behavior and unintended vandalism, as the whole exhibit suffered severe damage. More to come, after this next commercial break."

"KITSUNE!!! How could you do that!!!" Naru yelled at her. Kitsune shrugged.

"I'm sorry, I thought I was lighting my cigarette," she said. Naru fumed.

"You don't even smoke!!!!" she yelled. Kitsune chuckled.

"I know, isn't that funny? I guess I was so drunk I thought I did. I wonder where I got that lighter from…"

"Au!" Shinobu started. "What will happen now? Will Kitsune-sempai go to jail?" Motoko shook her head.

"From the report it seems they will just charge her. How she will pay for it is another mystery," Motoko answered.

"Haha…" Kitsune replied, laughing in a way that made everyone suspicious.

"Well I'd better get back to my studies," Naru said, turning towards the stairs to walk back to her room.

"I as well…it seems that there is a rumor of a pop quiz tomorrow. I'd better study," Motoko said. Shinobu nodded as well.

"I wonder where Su is, she was supposed to help me with some science!" Shinobu wondered aloud. Naru, who had been just about to climb the stairs stopped.

"Wait…wasn't she just with Keitaro? What if…?" Naru said, starting to worry. Her worry however turned to anger quickly. "If he did ANYthing…," she growled, and stomped up the stairs.

"Uh…" Shinobu said, as she helplessly watched Naru walk up the stairs to what she thought would be Sempai's certain doom.

"Do not worry," Motoko said, patting Shinobu on the head. "Su is with me. I made her stay in my room working. I'm sure that without any Su, Urashima will be perfectly safe. Naru just jumps to conclusions sometimes, but with no conclusion to jump to nothing can happen." Shinobu looked up and smiled. "But I would have to warn you," Motoko said. "You probably shouldn't fall in love with him."

"Wha-wha-whaaat?!!" Shinobu said, suddenly stumbling backwards. "I have not…I mean, nothing has…no no no!!!" Shinobu blushed and denied it vehemently.

"Good," Motoko said, and turned towards the stairs as well. Shinobu followed.

"Motoko, there is no such thing going on!!!" Shinobu cried.

"Good. I believe you," Motoko replied, walking in such a way that caused Shinobu to follow her all the way to her room. Kitsune was left in the living room by herself.

"Hmmm…how will I pay up that bill? Maybe I should seduce Keitaro into giving me money," Kitsune wondered aloud again.

"Bad idea," Haruka said, walking in chewing on a toothpick. "He won't fall to _your_ wiles anyways."

"What? How will I know if I don't try?" Kitsune asked. Haruka continued to chew on her toothpick.

"You can try, but I'd put money on it that you'll fail. Have you seen him, by the way?" Haruka asked. Kitsune shrugged.

"Not since he went up to study by himself," Kitsune said pointing towards the stairs. Haruka looked towards the stairs.

"Ok," she replied, walking towards the stairs. "By the way," she said, stopping at the foot of the stair momentarily to spit out the toothpick in the trash. "You can work for me if you'd like." She then disappeared to the second floor.

"Tsh," Kitsune replied. "I don't need a job!" And then she set about seriously on how best to seduce Keitaro.

--------------------------------------Second Floor Hallway----------------------------------

"Where IS he?!" Naru grumbled to herself. Having stomped up the stairs ready to pound Keitaro she was disappointed that she had found his room empty. However, she was not ready to give up.

"Looking for someone?" Haruka asked, appearing in the hallway as well. Naru spun around.

"Uh…sort of," Naru answered. She suddenly thought Su might not be in danger after all; maybe she was just in her room inventing things. This would make her looking for Keitaro quite ridiculous after all.

"I didn't know you two were that close already," Haruka commented. Naru stumbled and almost fell down.

"Whaat?!! NO! I was just checking to see if…if…" Naru trailed off.

"…if he was molesting Su? Don't worry, she's safe in her room. You can hear her tinkling with her machines from this floor," Haruka said. "And I just went upstairs to find Keitaro in the bathroom after I knocked on the door.

"Oh," Naru answered feeling quite foolish that her intentions had again seemed to be overboard. But then again, it was all for _her_ protection…

"So, if you would join me in his room I would be quite grateful," Haruka said. Naru again did a double-take.

"Wha-what? Why would I do that?" Naru asked, waving her arms frantically. "I don't want to see him any more than I have to!!" Haruka shrugged.

"Oh. I just thought out of any resident you seemed to have the most interaction with him. Maybe Su was just an excuse to see how he is," Haruka said. Naru couldn't believe what Haruka had just insinuated, and her lack of response showed it. Haruka looked at her seriously for a moment then laughed. "I'm kidding! I'm kidding! I just wanted to talk to you for a minute and since I have to talk to him his room is a good place." Naru immediately recovered.

"No no! I have to study anyways, I'm sorry Haruka-san, but I have a test tomorrow," Naru said, trying to get away from Haruka. Tonight, for some reason, Haruka was creeping her out. Or…_no, it's all HIS fault. Everything is his fault!! If I don't get to achieve my promise with Seta-San…I'll _kill _him!! _Naru thought angrily.

"You have a test everyday. Why not take a few moments out of your studying to have a nice chat?" Haruka asked. Naru bowed apologetically.

"I really can't," she said. Haruka sighed.

"Fine, how about I ask you right now? I have a desperate problem I need you to help me with," Haruka said. "I'll owe you a huge favor." Naru looked at her again, suspicious. Haruka was usually a strong woman who never had desperate problems. And even if she did, she would never ask anyone to help, precisely for the reason that she would owe someone a huge favor. But now she was asking Naru for help. _On one hand it would seem pretty rude to say no before even hearing it out and she _is_ Haruka-san,_ Naru thought, _but on the other hand I'm pretty sure whatever she is going to say I'm going to hate it._

"What is it?" Naru asked.

"I need you to help tutor Keitaro in his studies," Haruka said.

"Wha-absolutely NOT!" Naru said, almost yelling. Haruka sighed again. _I knew this wouldn't be easy,_ she thought.

"I know you two may not get along that well," Haruka said.

"Try not at all," Naru retorted.

"But I also know you have a kind heart and that my nephew has absolutely no chance of improving in his studies and getting into college without your help. You were top in the nation after all," Haruka said. "My nephew practically begged me to ask you."

"But he is such a…pervert!! I can't work with him!!" Naru protested. "What if he molests me while studying?"

"I highly doubt he'll be able to do that with your strength. Anyways, I'll get him to promise not to, in writing, otherwise I'll personally take care of it," Haruka said. Naru still didn't want to do it, but with Haruka's promise of personally taking care of it, Naru couldn't help but agree to it. When Haruka took care of things, they got taken care of. Naru could at least trust Haruka-san if not that pervert Keitaro.

"Fine! But can we start tomorrow instead of tonight so I can prepare myself, physically and mentally?" Naru asked.

"How about academically too?" Haruka asked. Naru nodded.

"Of course," she relied with a sigh.

"Thank you very much Naru," Haruka said, this time bowing to her. "I know that if you help him his chances of acceptance will rise like never before. And if you ever need a favor in return, just call me." Naru nodded, and then left. Haruka watched her go.

"Well that's one thing taken care of. I guess I'll just wait in his room until he comes out to tell him the news," Haruka said, strolling towards Keitaro's room.

-------------------------------------Men's Bath------------------------------------------------

"Hmm….barrel bathing is not as bad as I thought," Keitaro mused aloud. "At least I get to bathe undistracted." Keitaro sat back down in the barrel. At least in here he wasn't in constant danger of being assaulted, like out there in the Inn or worse yet around any of the other girls. Of course, he was supposed to be on a mission. And he hadn't even yet heard the details. All he knew so far was Su, or Agent 888, was supposed to give him details. He remembered she was supposed to be keeping watch on someone…oh well, he'd just wait till he could get a moment alone with her. Of course it seemed that with the Narusegawa-hound around he might not be able to get any decent amount of time. Well, maybe he'd just have to make the opportunity…_Agent 888 will also be able to know when to contact I guess,_ Keitaro thought. Agent 888 always had better timing, as he had first found out during that first simulation exercise…

"Ok remember that your mission is to extract the vital informant without getting him killed," Ms. H announced to the class. "A wounded informant will also make you lose points as will the loss of your partner. Remember that there are 6 other teams competing for the same informant. Rendering them immobile is preferable to their death, but it is not necessary to do either."

"Does damage to the environment count for any points?" a random agent asked.

"Only if on a large scale, for example, if it would be visible from the outside of the building. Of course any destruction will also alert the security system in the building. Remember the schematics of the building for it is vitally important to know your surroundings. I will give you ten minutes to plan your extraction and then will start the simulation. Remember that you may plan for longer, however, this will decrease your time for extraction and also give others a head start. Ten minutes is starting…now!"

"Ok, Agent Four, any ideas?" Su said, turning towards Keitaro. Keitaro was pleasantly surprised, for every other time he had done this the older Agent had always started with his/her own plan and then asked Agent Four's opinion on it. Agent Four subconsciously made his own plan each time, but to his eternal disappointment no one had ever asked him what he thought. Until now.

"I do, actually," Keitaro replied. He pointed to the schematic of the building. "We see here that the building is spread out over several thousand square feet, but has only a couple of floors, most notably several basement levels. We are given intel that the informant is supposed to be on the lowest floor, B4, somewhere around the middle of the complex. An obvious approach would be to dig underground. This is the safe way since apparently they have no defenses against such an entry method. However, this is slow and time consuming, as the ground will probably prove to be tough to dig into, even with the best of tools. There will also probably be lots of noise associated with this entry method. And since we also want to extract him before the others I suggest we enter from here, the ceiling above the elevator shaft that takes you down to B4. However, this is not easy. Only one agent will be able to enter, and that will be you." Keitaro looked up when he heard laughter, Agent 888's laughter. "Uh…what's so funny?" Su was laughing so hard she had to wipe her tears away to answer Keitaro.

"Nothing…nothing…it's just I've never seen you so passionate about anything," Su replied. "Please…please continue."

"Well, uh, do you have any comments?" Keitaro asked. Su shook her head.

"Usually I follow my partner's plan and improve on the way," she said. Keitaro seemed surprised.

"Oh." He had been sure Su had some secret plan up her sleeve, but maybe she was just being polite? "I'm serious, though, if you have any comments to add, please tell me at any time."

"Will do. Please continue," Su said, smiling. A little more confident, Keitaro continued.

"Ok, to get through the ceiling you will have to enter the stairwell here and then enter this maintenance shaft here. The problem with this is that there are guards on the roof, guards in the stairwell, and cameras in the shaft. However, I believe I will be able to create a disturbance and be able to get to here, the security room, and disable the guards using this," Keitaro said, taking out a device that looked like a gun except instead of a normal barrel it had a glass barrel where you could see a green gas circling around in it.

"What is that?" Su asked. Keitaro smiled.

"I made it myself. It's a special mix of chemicals that causes a symptom in the human body much like rigor mortis. You load it like this," Keitaro said, taking a clip of small glass tubes and fixing it into the handle much like a normal clip. "It works like a normal gun, shattering on contact and releasing enough gas to make the whole body go into this rigor mortis like-symptom. Of course if they are wearing a gas mask it would render it in effective, but I would doubt these guards are. Of course if this weapon is ineffective, I also have the normal armaments.

"Next, you'll go down the elevator shaft to B4 and extract the informant. The guards there should be taken down easily since they should have no prior warning. Of course, if the _other_ groups alert them, it might be harder or easier depending on what they plan to do, but I think we should be able to get there quick enough so the other teams won't matter. Well, what do you think?" Su seemed to think for a while, and then spoke.

"It's vitally flawed in one point," Su said. "We don't actually do anything together!"

"Oh," Keitaro said. Of course his plan couldn't have been perfect…

"And after you deactivate everything, you're still a sitting duck. How will you be able to defend yourself? I think that your plan would be even better if we simply did everything together. Ok?"

"Uh…isn't that ridiculously dangerous?" Keitaro asked. Su laughed.

"That's the fun part!" she said. She took out several guns and handed a couple to Keitaro. "Ready?" Su asked. Keitaro shrugged his shoulders.

"I guess," Keitaro answered. Today was just full of surprises…

"Ten minutes are up, begin!" Ms. H yelled, and immediately portals appeared in front of each pair of agents and they all walked through them, entering the virtual world.

**BANG!** Keitaro suddenly woke up. Again. He had been dreaming again! Why did he keep on dreaming about Agent 888? He noticed with a falling face that his fingers were prune-like. That meant that he had been sleeping for a while. Oh well, maybe this sleeping meant he would be awake when he reported to the PHB.

"Keitaro?" Keitaro spun around and saw with great surprise Su walking into his bathroom.

"A-a-a-Su!" Keitaro exclaimed. "What are you doing here?!" Su closed the door.

"I need to talk with you. Don't worry, people think I'm tinkering in my room with my inventions!" Su came closer.

"Su! At least let me put on some clothes!" Keitaro exclaimed, trying to shift his body so nothing would be visible. "Or a towel!"

"Keitaro…I…" Su started, stopping where she was. "I have something to tell you."

"You do?" Keitaro replied stupidly, still frantically searching for something that would cover himself.

"Yeah, you see, we've been apart for four years…and I've missed working with you, no, I've missed _you_," Su started. "And I think that I might, um, I might…"

**KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK!** "Keitaro are you in there? It's Haruka, I need to talk with you when you finish. Hurry up, it's important."

"Ah, ye-yes Aunt Haruka!" Keitaro responded quickly. "Ok, I'll be right out." He looked at Su, who seemed sad. This shocked Keitaro somewhat.

"Su! Ah…I promise…I promise I'll talk with you right after I talk to Aunt Haruka!" Keitaro hurriedly said. Never had he once seen Su this sad…or was it disappointment? But he didn't have time and finally managed to reach his towel that he had been reaching for, and, wrapping it around himself, got dressed into his pajamas.

"But Keitaro—" Su began, but Keitaro cut her off.

"Su, I'm really glad to be back together with you but will talk about the mission details later!" And Keitaro rushed off, but not before patting Su on the head like he always used to do.

"But Keitaro," Su mumbled to the empty air, "I think I love you."

-------------------------------------Keitaro's Room------------------------------------------

"Ah, Keitaro, you sure took your sweet time in the bath," Haruka said standing up when Keitaro entered.

"Sorry! I had, uh, things to think about…" Keitaro said, almost betraying the fact Su had entered uninvited. He really needed to buy some locks.

"Anyways, I wanted to tell you of the latest update," Haruka said.

"Update?" Keitaro asked. "What do you mean, update?"

"You're not going to like this, but you're going to have to pretend you like it. Actually, you're going to have to pretend you wanted it as well. A lot," Haruka said. Keitaro was curious and slightly apprehensive. He would have to pretend he wanted something? But he wouldn't like it? _This doesn't really bode too well,_ he thought.

"I asked Naru if she could tutor you," Haruka said. Keitaro's face flinched showing his absolute horror at the idea.

"You asked _what_?" Keitaro said. Haruka repeated herself.

"I asked Naru if she could tutor you."

"Why in the world would you ask that?" Keitaro asked. "You should know I don't need tutoring!!" Haruka waggled her finger.

"Actually, I think someone with a 48 average would need some tutoring from the nation's top scholar. Plus, it'll help you get closer to her," Haruka added. Keitaro sputtered.

"She is the _last_ person I want to get close too!" Keitaro cried. Haruka shook her head.

"Come on. Trust me on this. If, after a couple sessions, you two aren't getting along better then you can stop, but I bet you'll find some nice things about this girl. Heck, you may even start to l—"

"Don't even SAY it," Keitaro said, cutting her off. "You know what I think about that." Haruka put her hands up in surrender.

"Ok, ok, I'm just saying you both have the wrong image of each other. You start tomorrow. And please act grateful," Haruka added. "Otherwise she'll rail on me." Keitaro sighed.

"You really know how to work people," he said. Haruka shrugged.

"Hey, I just do what I can," she said. "Don't hate me for it."

"Whatever," Keitaro said. He looked at his watch; it read 11:00pm. "Anyways, time to sleep soon. A little more studying, reporting, then to bed."

"Oh, by the way, did it go well with Su?" Haruka asked suddenly. Keitaro looked at Haruka.

"What are you talking about?" he asked, eyeing her suspiciously.

"Don't play dumb, I heard that she contacted you. Isn't she your partner from years ago? I heard about how the PHB yelled at you two, and I'm not even _in_ the agency anymore," Haruka said. Keitaro hesitated before answering.

"Well…I haven't really gotten to talk to her. She tried twice, but the first time was interrupted by Naru and well, uh, the second time didn't work either," Keitaro admitted. "I still don't know the details."

"Ah, well, I assume she'll be by sometime tonight. Don't worry, I got Naru busy with fixing you up for tomorrow's lessons," Haruka said. "I'm sure you'll have ample time tonight for a happy reunion. If you need a place you can use the tea house by the way."

"A place for what? What do you think we're going to do?" Keitaro asked. Haruka shrugged.

"I don't know. Plan things? If you do it in your room Naru could hear you possibly. Maybe a joint report? Jeez, I'm just being nice. How about this: I'll even bake you a reunion cake," Haruka said. Keitaro waved his hand in a "no" gesture.

"No, we don't need that, but thanks for the place, we might be by to use it as a place for headquarters, you're right, Narusegawa might be able to hear me." Keitaro could only imagine the horrors of Narusegawa finding Su with him at 12:00 PM…he shuddered.

"Ok then, I'll see you later," Haruka said and exited the room. Keitaro took out a science book and sat down and started to read.

::30 Minutes Later::

"This is so boring!" Keitaro cried, throwing the book against the wall and falling onto his back. He had read all about biology, chemistry, and every other related topic. They were boring him out of his mind. Not that they were particularly difficult to understand, but more that they failed to keep him interested. The chemistry Keitaro had thought could have been interesting except it was meant more as an introduction than anything else, as the actual interesting parts would have been taught in the college. He had also read up on econ and Japanese History – yes, all within 30 minutes. He was blessed with a photographic memory so most things didn't take that long to memorize if it took any time at all. He also was a speed reader. All in all, he basically was a genius, as most people already knew, except for the girls in this dorm.

He sighed. How was he supposed to play dumb? _That_ was something that the agency hadn't taught him, and it would only get harder as he had to undergo tutoring lessons from Narusegawa…what had Aunt Haruka been thinking? He looked at the clock again – only 11:30 PM. He just wanted to go to bed, but he still had 30 minutes till he had to report…maybe he should go looking for Su? _But then again, it seems that if I go _looking_ for her my intentions may be misinterpreted. Maybe I should wait for her to contact me,_ Keitaro thought. _I'll wait 5 minutes or so._ But the 5 minutes turned out to be 30 and Keitaro could only contact the boss without Su's information or Su.

::The Next Morning::

"Oh!" Shinobu cried when she walked into the kitchen. She had thought if she woke up early enough that she would be able to prepare breakfast before Sempai had come in, but yet he was still here? "Good morning Sempai," she said, bowing to Keitaro. Keitaro turned around, also surprised. It was only 6:00 in the morning.

"What are you doing up?" Keitaro asked. He was in front of the stove frying something.

"Um…I was just supposed to be making breakfast," Shinobu said. She put her finger in her mouth, unsure of what to do. "But if you don't want me to...I mean, it's totally okay if you don't want me to!!" Keitaro laughed.

"No, not at all, cooking is just a bit of a hobby for me, and since I couldn't sleep last night I figured I would just wake up and cook breakfast now," he said.

"What are you making?" Shinobu asked him.

"Omelets," Keitaro answered. He picked up the pan to show her. "See?" Shinobu looked and noticed with sadness she didn't know how to make it and therefore couldn't offer to help to make it.

"Oh…" she said sadly. Keitaro looked at her, and somehow deducing that she wanted to help decided to let her.

"Do you want to learn how to make it?" he asked. Shinobu immediately perked up.

"Yes! Yes, I would very much like to!" she said happily. Almost immediately though she realized her tone of voice sounded over-eager and subdued her request. "I mean, I would very much appreciate if you could teach me Sempai!" She bowed swiftly. Keitaro chuckled as he put the pan back down on the stove.

"No need to be polite, come over here…" he said, and he showed her exactly how to make an omelets. "First you fry eggs, I assume you've done that before…no? And then…"

::7:00 AM::

"Breakfast is served!" Shinobu cried happily, as the residents began to slowly filter in. Motoko was the first, having just finished her morning exercises like she always did, waking at 5:00 in the morning to practice. But wherever Motoko was Su was bound to be close by and yes, indeed, she did bounce in only several moments after Motoko was seated. Naru would usually come in on time, unless she had been up especially late studying; on those occasions she might or might not show up. However, the week had just started so the test at the end of the week was sufficiently far enough away that Naru didn't have to start studying too late – yet.

"Good morning Shinobu," Naru greeted, walking in and sitting down in her usual spot. Surprisingly enough, Kitsune was not drunk when she entered in only moments afterwards.

"Good morning everyone!" she said enthusiastically. Everyone was shocked that she was so loud so early in the morning.

"Are you drunk already?" Naru asked. Everyone else was thinking the same thing, for what else could cause Kitsune to be so boisterous in the morning?

"No, but I do admit that I have been quite bad lately," Kitsune said. Everyone was shocked – no one knew what surprised them more, the fact that she wasn't drunk or the fact she didn't deny she was usually drunk.

"Oh," was the only thing Naru could respond. "Well, uh, come in and sit down." Kitsune pranced in and flashed a giant smile at Keitaro, who could only nervously smile back. Shinobu placed a plate down in front of her, and Kitsune looked down at it with curiosity.

"I've never seen, uh, this interesting and delectable dish before," she said. "Just learn how to make it?" Shinobu nodded, and Kitsune poked at it with her chopsticks before finally grabbing some and putting it in her mouth. "Mmm…it's pretty good. Did Keitaro teach you how to make it?" Shinobu nodded again.

"Yes, umm…Sempai did teach me. I think it is a very flexible dish and I'm very excited about it!" Shinobu said. Keitaro shook his head.

"No no no, I just gave her a simple idea that she had already thought of except hadn't dared to taste herself," Keitaro said.

"No, Sempai really inspired me a lot!" Shinobu continued to say.

"Not very true, she did all the work," Keitaro also persisted to deny.

"Look at you two," Kitsune said, smiling. "Arguing like newlyweds!" Shinobu looked away from Keitaro immediately, turning a deep beet-like red. Keitaro also looked away and chuckled nervously.

"What are you talking about Kitsune?" Naru asked, eating. "Don't be so stupid." Kitsune looked back at Naru.

"Clearly," Kitsune said, "Someone's just jealous." This comment managed to not only stop Naru from eating, but also caused her to spit out all of the food in her mouth onto Motoko in surprise.

"WHAT?!! Where do you get these ideas? I think something is seriously wrong with your head!!" Naru yelled at her. Everyone was now staring at Naru, who realized she had probably raised the volume of her voice a little too loudly. She also just realized Motoko was covered with eggs that had just been in her mouth.

"Oh! Motoko, I'm sorry!!!" She cried, and started to help Motoko to clean.

"It is okay. I would have reacted in a similar fashion," Motoko said. "I also have not changed into my school attire yet so there is little consequence."

"I think Naru just got angry cause I'm right," Kitsune said.

"Shut up Kitsune," Naru said while still helping Motoko. An awkward silence ensued as Kitsune actually listened. The atmosphere was uncomfortable – for most of them, this was the most enmity that they had seen between the two best friends, Kitsune and Naru, for about…well, ever since they had met them.

"Um…" Shinobu said, breaking the silence. "Do you want to pass me your dishes if you're done?" It was getting to around 7:30 and that was the time that most of them went off to school.

"Catch!" Su cried and tossed a plate at Shinobu.

"Ahhh!" Shinobu shrieked at the sight of the incoming plate. She ducked and Motoko started to jump up to hit it away with her sword when Keitaro deftly caught it with one hand.

"Su!! What are you doing?!!" Keitaro yelled. Su looked at Keitaro for a second, then suddenly stuck out her tongue at him, and bounded out of the room. Motoko looked through the empty door as if Su had gone mad. Which perhaps she had, considering her behavior of throwing a plate at Shinobu like she was…angry? _And then, _Motoko thought, _even more curious was the way Keitaro yelled at her…I must ask Su about this later._ Her mind quickly raced through the many possibilities of this interaction, but finding no suitable explanations she also stood up.

"I'm going," she said simply "I have to prepare for class." She left the room with a couple quick strides, and now only Naru and Kitsune were left eating. Keitaro took up the other dishes and started to wash them.

"No Sempai, I can wash them myself!" Shinobu said. Keitaro laughed. "No, it's okay. You should go prepare for school. Shoo!" Keitaro made a "shooing" motion with his hand, waving her away. Shinobu obeyed meekly, looking back longingly with her index finger in her mouth, then quickly hurried away.

"It's not like _you _don't have school," Naru said. She took her plate up to where Keitaro was washing dishes. "Why don't you let me do it? You cooked anyways and I'm all ready for cram school already."

"Uh…no, it's ok," Keitaro said. He took her plate and washed it. "I have my stuff ready too."

"Really now," Naru asked. Keitaro nodded. Naru shrugged and walked out. Kitsune was the last one in the room.

"Here," she said. She gave him her plate, looked around, and then batted her eyelids at him. "You know…it's very cool that you can cook so well." Keitaro, who hadn't even looked her way, shrugged.

"I really can't cook," he said. "I just follow recipes, then it's actually pretty easy."

"Well, for me it's always pretty difficult so I admire a man who can cook," Kitsune responded. "I always dreamed of marrying someone who can cook for me…"

"I'm sure you'll find someone just for you," Keitaro said, finishing up and turning off the faucet.

"I think I already may have," Kitsune said. Keitaro left the room and said.

"I'm glad for you." Kitsune was left by herself. She pouted and stuck her tongue out at Keitaro.

"You may be immune for now, but you'll eventually fall under my thumb…and then you'll pay all my bills!!"

------------------------------Entranceway of Hinata-Sou-----------------------------------

"Bye Sempai!" Shinobu cried out, waving her hands as she walked out of the entrance.

"See ya Keitaro!" Su yelled bounding out as well. Keitaro waved to them both as they walked away.

"See you guys later!" he yelled so he could be heard. Motoko then brushed passed him.

"Goodbye Urashima," she said swiftly then disappeared as well.

"Good…bye?" Keitaro stopped halfway because by then Motoko had disappeared down the steps.

"What are you doing?" Naru asked.

"Me?" Keitaro said. Naru rolled her eyes.

"No, the elephant behind you. Of _course_ you, you fool," Naru said.

"I was saying goodbye," Keitaro told her. _Isn't it obvious? _He thought.

"Well, you're going to see them again in five minutes when you walk down the stairs to the train stop," Naru explained. "So I don't know why you just didn't go with them."

"Oh," Keitaro said, now feeling slightly foolish. "Well, uh, they said goodbye first!"

"So?" Naru asked.

"So…that means that I was obligated to say goodbye back!" Keitaro said.

"I see," Naru responded. "Well then I guess you're going to have to wait here for the train after the 7:47 one and be late to class so you don't run into them. See you later!" Naru waved goodbye and ran down the steps as well.

"Wait, what? Narusegawa, come back!!" Keitaro yelled. He took his messenger bag and sprinted down the steps. Or at least he tried to. It could be said that his fall down the stairs was an act of pure beauty and grace, complete with spins, tumbles, and flips all set to the soundtrack of him yelling. However, most people would have to argue that no, his fall was an act full of stupidity, complete with a lack of respect for the first step and a tendency to not look at his surroundings, although both were set to the soundtrack of him yelling.

"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!" Keitaro yelled, falling down the stairs. **SQUISH!**

"Urashima…" Motoko growled. Keitaro had fallen on Motoko, and not only that had fallen in such a way that several delicate areas of a girl that you normally stay away from were being handled in an entirely inappropriate manner. "DIE!!!!"

Keitaro could have dodged the incoming blow, even though it was at point blank range, if he hadn't just been so disorientated from the fall. He also might have had a better chance if Motoko wasn't so angry (or so red in the face) and if Su and Shinobu hadn't been there. He didn't know why the last part mattered, but for some reason he felt like he deserved it.

A full wave full of the instinct of self-preservation, and not to mention ki, slammed into Keitaro along with the non-sharp end of the sword. Keitaro was grateful for that part – at least Motoko hadn't tried to slice him up as well as slam him away, although she had yelled 'die' in a manner that would usually cause one to assume so.

"Aieeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!" Keitaro yelled as he became a mere speck on the horizon.

"Huh, Keitaro was blown a far way away!!!" Su said aloud, stating the obvious.

"Will…will Sempai be okay?" Shinobu asked. Motoko sheathed her sword and smoothed out her clothing.

"I'm sure he'll be able to survive this considering what he's survived before. And if he doesn't then he got his just desserts," Motoko said.

"How can you say that?!!" Shinobu cried out, but her voice was lost as the train came and the hustle of people getting on and off erased the possibility of a discussion. Shinobu, Su, Motoko, and Naru entered the train.

"Although I hate to say it," Naru said, "I'm glad that it wasn't me this time."

"Why would you hate to say it?" Motoko asked.

"Well just because it meant it had to be somebody else. But at least you have the capability of protecting yourself. Imagine if it was Shinobu or Su he did it to!" Naru said. Motoko nodded, but interestingly enough Shinobu and Su were thinking the same thing.

_It wouldn't be too bad if that happened to me…_

A/N: Another chapter has been released. You'll forgive my grammar mistakes and inconsistencies. I usually write these in my spare time, and that has gone down immensely as of late, so attention to stories in general, as you people may have noticed, has been sadly slow. Well, here is a slightly longer chapter and hopefully it wasn't too bad!! Yay!!


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